"Please!" Segis cried, her hands waving helplessly in the air. "Please, this is not the time to be fighting among ourselves! Whatever you think this man has done, is it worth spilling his blood? Is it worth violating this planet's sacred principles and taking his life?" Her appeal fell on deaf ears and hearts of stone, but she pressed on. "Think about what you're doing! Once done, it can never be undone!"
Segis's acolytes stepped forward to try to free Baltar from the mob's hold, but didn't get more than a pace or two before a strident voice rang through the hall, halting their advance.
"The Cylons plan to use us as lab animals!"
Baltar squinted through the blood dripping in his eyes, trying to attach a face to the voice that had just spoken. He saw three figures running down the main aisle of the hall, coming directly for the platform on which he stood.
"Who said that?" he asked. "What are you—?"
Apollo and the hooded Starbuck were leaping up onto the platform, followed by Gar'Tokk. Segis looked momentarily surprised, but recovered so quickly that the look of surprise might not have been there at all. The Noman grabbed Baltar and pulled him from the grips of the surprised civilians with contemptuous ease. Apollo stood at the rostrum to address the confused and terrified assemblage.
"It's true," he said. "The Cylons plan to use our DNA to upgrade and evolve their race." The hooded figure who had entered with Starbuck stayed back, hugging the shadows around himself like a cloak.
Baltar shook his head, angrily. "That's not true!" he cried. "In all my time with the Cylons, I never saw anything that would support such a preposterous—"
"Ask Dr. Salik," Apollo said, turning to face Baltar. Such was the look of pure anger on his face that Baltar fell silent, took two or three steps back. He had never seen Apollo like this before.
Near the front of the audience, Dr. Salik stood and turned to face the back of the hall. "It's true," he shouted. "Doctor Wilker and I discovered the human DNA splices when we examined the corpse of a Cylon we'd kept in storage. They're trying to use our genes to evolve their race."
"That's a lie!" Baltar erupted, blood and spittle flying from his beaten lips in a fine spray. There was a Borellian saying: Don't pray too loud, you might draw the gods' attention. Baltar would have done well to take that advice and apply it to his own situation, because his outburst only drew the commander's focus and ire. Apollo grabbed Baltar by the collar and swung him around, hard, throwing him against the proscenium wall.
"You've played us like puppets all along," Apollo said through gritted teeth. His fingers tightened on Baltar's neck, his thumbs dimpling the soft flesh of the traitor's throat. Apollo was going to squeeze the life from this man with his bare hands. The colonials may well all die here today, but Baltar would not live to see his duplicitous scheme borne out. Baltar's face purpled, and his eyes bulging almost comically, his tongue protruding from his mouth. His hands, gripping Apollo's wrists, twitched and spasmed as the flow of oxygen to his brain dwindled. "How did you do it, Baltar?" Apollo asked. "How did you and Segis plan this? What did she promise you?"
"Commander!" Segis said, gesturing once more for her acolytes to step forward. "You have my assurance this man and I are not in collusion, and please forgive me, but I cannot allow you to make such a terrible mistake."
The acolytes gripped the commander's wrist and squeezed down with near-crippling pressure. He could hear the bones in his wrist grinding together. Apollo could no longer maintain his grip on Baltar and he gasped, despite himself, out of pain and surprise, and when he was sure the acolytes would shatter his wrist, the hooded men pulled Apollo back and held him in their insanely powerful grips. To the audience, nothing looked out of place; nothing wrong here, other than the fact Baltar was still alive and breathing.
Gar'Tokk leapt immediately to Apollo's defense, but the acolyte holding him moved with lightning swiftness, and threw up his palm to catch the Noman's massive fist. The hooded figure squeezed down on Gar'Tokk's hand, but the warrior refused to yield, despite the terrible pain. He brought his foot up, but the caretaker blocked the kick with his other hand, and flung the bewildered Noman through the rostrum and off the edge of the platform, into the first row of the assembly. However powerful the man-droids they had faced in the alley, these hooded figures were more powerful still, enough to take on even Gar'Tokk. The Noman was staggering to his feet, dazed from the force of the impact, but he sensed the approach of his enemies and turned to face them.
Gar'Tokk!" Apollo shouted; the acolyte whose arms were locked around Apollo's chest was tightening his grip, grinding the commander's ribs, squeezing the air from his lungs. It would just be a matter of moments before a rib shattered, or his spine. Apollo tried to reach his sidearm, but the maniacal pressure around his chest increased exponentially.
"Sorry to hear about that short life span of yours," Apollo's hooded companion said as he finally got a clear shot and fired his laser. The acolyte's head vanished in a mist of shrapnel and a gout of flame, and then, the body was falling away from the commander, trailing a plume of smoke as thick as a hangman's noose. Apollo's sidearm was in his hand before his former attacker's body hit the ground, and he blasted the acolyte attacking Gar'Tokk. The cyber-priest threw its arms up, as if some holy revelation had dawned, and then toppled face-forward. The audience gasped in first horror and then surprise as shock continued after shock: Starbuck whipped off his cowl while keeping the remaining caretakers and acolytes at bay with his laser.
"Got your back, buddy," Starbuck told Apollo.
Apollo never had a doubt that he did.
Athena stared in open-mouthed bewilderment at Starbuck, unable to accept the proof of her eyes. "Starbuck?" she said, softly, afraid to speak his name loudly for fear the very force of her breath might cause this apparition to dissolve. He turned to her and smiled, pretending to doff an imaginary hat in mock chivalry. Cassiopeia and Dalton were no better prepared to see Starbuck returned from the dead in full vigor and fighting glory. It was either a desecration of Starbuck's memory, or a full-blown miracle, and although they had all witnessed many strange and wonderful things over the yahren, they had never seen a miracle. Until now.
"Your father has some tall explaining to do," Cassiopeia promised Dalton, as if she were speaking of nothing more than Starbuck having spent the night in the company of another woman. But her voice warbled and climbed high with emotion as she fought back her tears of elation. "And I can't wait to hear what he has to say."
"This game's gone on long enough!" Apollo shouted, standing at the edge of the platform, facing Segis. Starbuck had taken his position on the steps leading to the platform, and both he and Apollo had their lasers drawn and trained on their enigmatic host.
Athena ran forward, placed her hand on Apollo's shoulder. "Apollo, stop!" she said. "What are you doing? She hasn't done anything!"
"Miss me?" Starbuck asked Athena, and flashed his rogue's smile at her. He never let his gun hand waver from its target as he swept her into his free arm, dipped her, and kissed her. She blinked and looked at him, mouth agape.
"Just in case there was any doubt," he told her.
"She's done plenty," Apollo said, and looked again at Segis. The uploading and awakening of his mind in the city beneath them let him see things Athena could not, and as he watched now Segis's features seemed to shift and run, first a woman, now a man, now genderless. Apollo squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them, Segis was once more a smiling, charming woman, as fine and kind as any had ever known.
"You were behind it all… not Baltar," Apollo said, and he felt the tumblers all click into place. "You masterminded our return to Kobol."
"You are mistaken, Commander Apollo," Segis said reasonably; she was smiling, but that smile never quite reached her eyes. "My people and I have always been subservient to the will of your people. We would never do anything to harm anyone. It would be a gross violation of our most sacred laws."
"Whose laws would that be?" Apollo asked, a
nd squeezed the trigger.
People screamed in horror as the ruby light struck the unarmed caretaker. Cain cursed and drew his own weapon. But Starbuck turned, his laser pointed at the old commander, and warned him with a wave of his weapon not to interfere.
"Trust him? He just gunned down a woman in cold blood!" Cain shouted.
"Really?" Starbuck asked, gesturing with the barrel of his laser. "Look again."
They all looked on as the body of Segis crumpled bonelessly to the floor, as if it were nothing but a sack of flesh… but it wasn't really a body, at all, just the robes she had worn. There was no body. Standing where Segis had stood, the robes pooled at her feet, was a shadowy creature that not only swallowed the light, but radiated darkness, its body rippling with nightmare images. To look for long upon this monster, this shape cut out of negative space, would be to know true despair, would surely result in gibbering, irretrievable madness. It was the Void, given shape, and it called itself Count Iblis.
"Welcome home," he said with deep, rising laughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I SUPPOSE YOU'RE wondering why I've called you all together?" Iblis laughed with a sound like decay, or the death _ of love and hope. It was a voice that crawled inside one's brain, in the wee, dark hours of the night, and whispered things, sick things, crazy things. It was the voice of madness; Count Iblis was quite mad in fact, but nonetheless dangerous for all of that.
Many of the colonials had heard the tales of Count Iblis, but to them, he was the Kobollian boogeyman, a tale told to frighten unruly children at bedtime. No one who was not familiar with the Kobollian legends truly believed he existed. But the great hall was now full of believers.
Athena understood in a lightning stroke that Iblis had presented himself in an image they each would trust, and understand; they all saw something different. The women of the fleet had seen a handsome, godlike man, the men, a beautiful, angelic woman. And Athena bet that each of the different races of the fleet saw Iblis as a trusted figure from his or her own lost world.
"What kind of twisted game have you been playing with us now, monster?" Apollo asked. He still clung to his gun, but conventional weapons were useless against this creature of pure, malevolent thought.
"Generations ago, on this very spot, your Kobollian forefathers cast me and my followers out of the House of Kobol," the Count said, his voice seething venom. "We were exiled to the most hostile and uninhabitable planet in the galaxy… Cylon. There, we were left to die. Instead, we… nurtured… the planet's life forms along the evolutionary path—instilling in them an insatiable hatred for humankind. I vowed never again to be at the mercy of humans. Humans are weak, destined for extinction. I've known this for millennia, and on Kobol began my experiments, culminating at last with the Cylons, a perfect race, a species truly worthy of inheriting the universe."
Iblis's red eyes sparked and danced, and he made a sound like a death rattle; Apollo realized with horror the Count was laughing.
"The Cylons are your next-of-kin," Iblis said, raising his hands, palms up, to his sides. "They're here for a family reunion." He turned toward Apollo, his red eyes growing darker until they were the color of spilled blood. "You and your sister, Athena, are the last of the direct descendants of the House of Kobol, and, as such, must die to avenge the deaths of millions of my tribe."
The Count's image did not appear on the flatscreen; instead, static and white noise filled the screen. His likeness, his true likeness, not that which he chose to broadcast, could not be captured or contained by simple technology. Iblis was beyond any mortal understanding. Occasional subliminal flashes of the Count would appear on the screen, too quick to register on the naked eye or conscious thought, but those images burrowed down into the brain and soul of any who dared look, and those who looked too long would simply go mad.
Iblis shook his head, as if speaking to children, or particularly thick-witted daggits. "I have been watching and playing with you and the colonials for aeons as you acted out your pitiful little life games, waiting for just the right moment to guide you back to Kobol. It is only here, in the land of my birth, and death, so to speak, that I have the power to reclaim my physical body and soul as I destroy yours.
"I am the nightmare that has been following you and your ancestors all your life, Apollo, the face at the edge of the shadows in your sleep chamber, the voice in your ear corrupting your better judgment," Iblis said. "You and the lovely Athena will now know the full weight of the horror that I have had to endure."
Iblis's eyes glowed brighter, and his body actually seemed to grow blacker; twin beams stabbed out from his eye sockets and struck Apollo. The force of the light staggered Apollo, throwing him back on his heels, but the corona of light that enveloped him began to fade, and the Star of Kobol Apollo wore around his neck flared as it drank the light into itself. Apollo realized at once what had happened, and so did Iblis.
One of the Warriors had taken advantage of Iblis's preoccupation with the commander to sneak up on the Count and draw his sidearm. The Warrior held the weapon scant centimetrons from the back of the Iblis's head, and pulled the trigger. The laser blast entered the Count's body, but did not emerge, as if Iblis had swallowed the light—a black hole in human form.
Iblis's hand snapped out behind and gripped the Warrior's throat, crushing his larynx closed. The man tried to scream, but all that emerged was a high-pitched, reedy, wailing sound. Iblis twisted his wrist, and the Warrior's neck snapped like dry kindling. Iblis threw the body aside as if the mere fact of it offended him.
The people who had been seated or standing nearest Iblis all backed away, fearing they might be next.
"Take off that trinket, Apollo," the Count commanded, gesturing at the Star of Kobol. As he did, whorls of light flashed and flowed slowly, back and forth, somewhere deep within the medallion. "Take it off, and let me banish you and your sister to the oblivion that is my existence, and perhaps I'll be merciful. Perhaps I can still convince the Cylons to spare the lives of some of your people."
Iblis glanced at the gathering contained within the great hall. Many had taken the opportunity of the confusion to leave; many more remained seated. Where was there to go?
The Count smiled, a thin gash of ruby in the blackness of his aura, as if he contained within him all the fires of hell. "The Cylons have a mind of their own, as willful children often do, but there is a use for your race, so I don't think they'll want to kill you all."
Apollo looked at Athena, who had made her way across the platform to stand near Starbuck. "Don't listen to him," she warned her brother. "You know Iblis is evil incarnate. You can't trust him… it."
"You hurt me, Athena," Iblis said. "Perhaps I can reply in kind."
With that, the man-shaped abyss turned toward the civilians who still occupied the hall, and raised his hand. A wave of darkness rippled from his outstretched fingers, shimmering across the cavernous room to envelop a Gemon woman whose lifemate had perished in the battle with the Chitain. She shrieked horribly, a scream that seemed to go on forever in the perfect acoustics of the hall, as the darkness settled on her flesh and broke into countless, insectoid-sized particles that burrowed their way under her skin, into her bones, and devoured her from within.
She was nothing more than a paper-thin husk that stood in place for a moment, then collapsed under the weight of itself, then vanished in a puff of dust.
Iblis's eyes blazed and he snapped his head around, directing his deadly eye-beams at a father who was trying to shield his motherless child behind his own body. A nimbus of ruby light danced around the father, and his body darkened as if in eclipse. The light shrank inward, drawing to a central point, erasing the man as it dwindled down to nothingess.
"I can keep this up forever," Iblis warned Apollo. "Every second you delay in giving me what I want, I'll take one more life."
At the back of the hall, the security guards tried to force open the doors, but Iblis had mentally sealed them. The guards drew their
lasers and fired at the doors, but their blasts ricocheted back at them, punching ragged, bloody holes through their chests. The men barely had time to register what had happened before they slumped against one another, like weary children after a day's hard play.
"Stop it, you perverted monster!" Apollo shouted, his hands fisted at his sides in helpless rage. "Leave them alone! They've done nothing to you! Your quarrel is with me!"
Iblis shrugged, indicating he was powerless to act otherwise. "Only you can stop the slaughter, Apollo, and you know what you have to do. Otherwise, I'd suggest you get comfortable; this could take a while." He turned away from Apollo, as if he were beneath notice, and let his red, glowing eyes roam over the sea of terrified faces laid out before him.
"All right!" Apollo said, "all right."
"Apollo!" Athena gasped. She knew what he meant to do.
"It's the only way," he told her, and, with great solemnity he removed the Star of Kobol from around his neck. He touched it to his forehead in a gesture of reverence, and placed it on the edge of the platform, then turned to face Iblis, his shoulders squared and his back straight.
Iblis nodded his approval, and motioned for Apollo to come nearer. Apollo looked to his closest friends and cohorts, and his eyes met theirs: Athena, Tigh, Starbuck. They all watched in mute horror as Apollo stepped closer to Iblis, walking willingly to his own death. But then, as he had said, it was the only way to spare the lives of the others.
"Smart boy," Iblis said, and his eyes blazed red as quartz. The light beams scorched the air between them and slammed into Apollo, making him jitter and jump as if he had grabbed a handful of lightning. He made small, glottal noises in the back of his throat and struggled to retain consciousness, for he knew instinctively that if he now were to lose his waking contact with this existence, he would find himself forevermore in the hated oblivion of which Iblis spoke.
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