Apollo and Serina a fast once-over when they entered the room. Apollo
pulled Serina to a dark coner and kissed her. At first her response to
the kiss was tentative, but, in a moment, she returned his kiss.
"Now, about my proposal..." Apollo said.
"Let's dispense with ritual. My room's next door.
Mmmmmm...whatever's in that grog, I'm considering taking it with me when
we leave this place."
Arm in arm, they left Boxey's room. Muffit Two's head settled back
on a pillow, it's eyes staying open, keeping a steady watch on the
doorway.
*****
From the Adama Journals:
I've tried many times to make entries in this journal about Baltar's
treason, but somehow I can't deal with the subject without seeing the
man's puffy egotistical face floating between me, ghostlike, and feeling
excruciating waves of hatred go through my body. I become tense and
can't think of words. Trying to put his treason into words would give it
a set of perimeters whose very limitations would diminish the pure an
unalterably selfish evil of the act. And I'm not about to rationalize a
treason of such dimensions. The acts of aliens like the Cylons or
Ubbo-Sathla are at least understandable to me as manifestations of ideas
that belong to different, perhaps ultimately incomprehensible, cultures.
With Baltar, I can understand the ideas he spouted, and I can even
imagine the awesome selfishness that led him to sell out his own people
for rewards that seem trivial in perspective---but that doesn't bring me
any closer to a clear conception of the man himself. It's all I can do
to make the ghost-face of him fade away. In his evil he is alien to me,
more alien than any multi-limbed or multi-eyed creature from a different
part of the universe.
*****
CHAPTER NINE: TRAPS AND SECRETS
On the Cylon base ship, Imperious Leader contemplated the latest
report from his centurion on Carillon's Lot. The plan was proceeding
efficiently; more and more humans were falling prey to the lure of
Ubbo-Sathla contentment. Nor had managed to doctor the food of several
of the human leaders (except, unfortunately, for Adama) with a drug that
helped her to sway their minds toward foolish decisions. "I have been
successful," she'd said, "with planting the idea of unilateral
disarmament into several buriticians' minds. Also, I have been
successful in holding back on the shipments of Tylium to the fleet in the
skies above my planet, supplying them enough of the liquid form of the
fuel to lull any suspicions they may have developed." But the Leader
wondered if the wily Adama could really be fooled so easily. All signs
pointed to that conclusion, but one fact that had emerged in the Leader's
many battles with Adama was trhe man's unpredictability. If a conclusion
about him seemed obvious, then it must be questioned.
Nevertheless, the time to act was now.
He sent out the order that the Supreme Star Force stationed at
Arrakis be immediately launched and set on a course for Carillon's Lot
with the mission of annihilating human survivors and their spacecraft.
This time Adama's foces would be rendered impotent, even if a few humans
did manage one of their miraculous escapeds.
Another message came to the Leader a few moments later. The rest of
the human fleet, the ships left behind by Adama that were traveling
toward Carillon's Lot at sublight speed, had been located. A malfunction
in their camouflage had given their coordinates away. The Leader
resisted an impulse to send out a force to destroy this group of wretched
and battered remnants of the human fleet. The better strategy was,
clearly, merely to maintain surveillance on these ships. They were
powerless and indefensible, obviously low on Tylium and supploies. No,
the logical move was to save their destruction for later. Adama was no
doubt in contact with the ships he had left behind. Attacking them now
might alert a rescue fleet, and that could not be allowed. Yes, the
waiting game seemed best for now. It was a strategy he had learned from
the humans.
Cylon victory was certain, the Leader told himself. The Supreme
Star Force's larger numbers would easily overwhelm the weakened human
fleet, he told himself. The ships left behind could be toyed with and
blasted to pieces, he told himself. He would have Adama's head as a war
trophy, he told himself. Nevertheless, a certain uneasiness, an
uncharacteristic tension, troubled his thoughts.
*****
On the bridge of the Galactica, Adama paced his usual path along the
starflied. Frequently, he made a fist out of his right hand, pounded it
into the palm of his left.
"Fools!" he muttered once. "Give them something to eat and all
judgment flies out of their minds. Is there any way I can stop this
council meeting they're planning, Tigh?"
"Nothing in the regs gives you any authority with the Council except
in regard to military affairs. Only then can you countermand them."
"They speak of universal disarmament. That's a military matter, is
it not?"
"Technically, no. Such decisions have always been in civilian
hands, sir. Many believe this to be proper and logical."
"I know, I know. I've a firm grasp on the theories behind the
separation of military and civilan responsibility. I even approve of it.
In theory at least. It's just that this group of muddleheads seem
possessed, Tigh. I just want to go into the council room and knock
heads."
Tigh smiled slyly and said:
"May I remind you, sir, in all due respect, that if you had not
resigned as president of the Council you would have the privilege of
going into that council room and knocking heads."
"I am all too aware of that, Colonel. All too painfully aware."
In the meeting room, the buriticians eyed Adama's entrance with
apprehensive caution. To Adama, they looked curious, as if they had been
physically transformed into total strangers.
Before taking his seat, which had been placed to one side to denote
his present lack of status on the Council, Adama said, "What, may I ask,
is the purpose of this special council?
Gant, the new president, gestured at the chair and replied.
"Adama, please respect the order of business until called upon by
this chair."
Adama sat, his anger growing. Even Gant, who'd once been his ally,
seemed odd now. The emaciated old buritician called the meeting to
order.
"It is the growing consensus of every man, woman, and child in this
body that to set forth into uncharted space is utter madness," Gant said.
"Hear, hear," said the rest of the buriticians, almost in unison.
The mutere agreement sound like a chant, orchestrated, of course, by Sire
Zalto.
"The question is," Gant continued," what do we do about the Cylons.
Obviously to remain here is to run the risk of discovery
. Sire Zalto has
a measure to propose. Zalto?"
Zalto rose to his feet, surveyed the council with a smile that
displayed his smugness for all.
"Brothers, brothers, lend me all your ears," he said unctuously. "A
hasty attempt to outrun the Cylons spawned in the nighttime of
desperation seems foolish in broad daylight."
Nighttime of desperation, indeed! Adama thought. How quickly these
oily buritricians could reduce the circumstances of tragedy to a cliché.
Did Zalto not remember the suffering, the panic, the Cylon fighters
killing our people and reducing our cities to rubble? Did he not even
remember the joy, however momentary, he must've felt when, safe in the
plush compartments of his own luxury liner, he knew he was still alive,
one of the few survivors? Or were men like Zalto empty of all feeling,
alive only to satisfy some instinctual greed or lust that moved them
through their shabby existences like microprocessor chips inside a droid?
Perhaps, Adama thought, he was just seeking rational excuses for what was
in reality madness.
"I propose," Zalto continued, with a significant glance toward
Adama, "that, instead of rushing off on a doomed mythical quest, we now
attempt to appeal for justice and mercy."
Adama could hold back his rage no longer. He rose to his feet,
shouting:
"Justice from the Cylons? Mercy? Did you actually say that?"
"Easy, Adama, easy," Zalto said. His voice had dropped almost to a
whisper. What really bothered Adama was that the other councilors had
appeared annoyed with him when he spoke and then had nodded at Zalto's
soothing imprecation. "I know you're unhappy with us, Commander, and I
understand how you feel. But you're a man of war, in case you've
forgotten, and to people like you gestures toward peace almost always
appear senseless. And that's my point. The spoils of enslaving us so
far from their base of power hardly seems worth the effort for the
Cylons."
"Enslaving? Base of power?" Adama, still unable to control the
anger in his voice, shouted, "Gentlemen, it's you who do you not
understand! The kind of reason you're trying to employ might be sensible
if we were dealing with other humans, with any species whose system of
values was parallel to our own. But these are the Cylons, gentlemen!
They said they would not stop until every human had been exterminated.
Not enslaved, mind you---exterminated! We have not even had the
priviledge of dealing with their leaders openly. All we know of them is
by interference and observation. Why should they change their own
methods? For that matter, why should they believe we are now willing to
accept that which we always found unacceptable? To live under Cylon
rule? We have always been just as adamant about that as they have been
in their avowed desire to exterminate us."
Many of ther brows around the council table gradually began to
frown. Perhaps, Adama thought, he was getting through the muddle.
"Commander," Zalto said, with an obvious sense of theatrical timing,
"the Ubbo-Sathla queen Nor has observed the Cylons up close, and in much
more peaceable circumstances. Her race has been at peace with the Cylons
for a millennium, and she assures me that victory is the Cylons' only
goal. It's a matter of satisfying their codes of order. If any
individual enemy or group of enemies still roam the universe, then they
feel it's their duty to exterminate them---to wipe out the flaw in their
sense of order, I suppose. But we can remove that flaw."
"How?" Adama asked, even though part of him didn't really want to
know.
"By destroying our arms to proved we're willing to live in peace."
"Destroy our only means of defense!"
"Or attack. As you recall, brothers, we were once at peace with the
Cylons. We didn't have conflict with them until we intervened in their
relations with other nations."
Adama struggled to keep from coming to blows with Zalto. He
wondered briefly whether, if Adama sprung upon him suddenly, the man
would refuse to fight back.
""Yes," Adama said, "you are right. We didn't come into conflict
with the Cylons until we defended our neighbors whom the Cylons wished to
enslave. And, until we helped the Sobrams get back their nation, which
was taken by force by the Cylons."
"That's right," Zalto said. "Which only serves to prove my point.
All we have to do is mind our own business, and the Cylons'll leave us
alone. It's just that simple."
Again the other buriticians, satisfied with Zalto's rhetorical
flourish, murmured approval. Adama could see there was no point in
trying to get through to them with anything resembling logic. He had
made his contingency plans. It ws now time to put them into effect. He
addressed the council in a quiet but tense voice.
"Gentlemen, if we have come to this table to turn our backs on the
principles of hluman reason and compassion, the principles of our fathers
and the Lords of Kobol, from whom our Twelve Colonies evolved, we do so
with my utter contempt!"
He turned and strode quickly from the room. After he had left, many
of the buriticians squirmed in their seats. Zalto turned to them and
spoke.
"These warriors! They're always the last to recognize the
inevitability of change. The Commander's always been fond of telling us
we don't have a choic, which always means to endorse his ideas slavishly.
Fortunately, we've got a choice: life or death."
"I supbmit that an issue this grave should be decided by the
people," Sire Zelar said.
"The military will be difficult to convince," Gant said. "How do
you propose we present so delicate a matter?"
After an uneasy pause, Zalto said:
"How about we do so at a celebration? People are always easier to
deal with at a celebration. Let's hold a celebration to decorate those
three brave youngsters who, at the risk of their lives, opened the
Carillon's Lot minefield for us. Without them, we'd still be on the
other side, starving. One of the pilots was Adama's son, Captain Apollo,
that right?"
Some members of the council cheered their support of Zalto, happy
that some solution had been found. Others applauded, impressed by
Zalto's clever stratagem of including Apollo in the celebration.
"That's a brilliant suggestion, Zalto," Gant said. "Why, that's
just the tonic our people need at this moment---some old-fashioned,
honest-to-goodness heroes!"
"You took the words right out of my mouth," Zalto said, his smile a
bit more malicioius than usual.
*****
Starbuck had spent a great deal of time trying to convince the lead
singer of the Caladana group that he could hurl them from this dinky
little engagement in an outworld chancery into a full-fledged big-time
career. The singer had not responded to Starbuck's pleadings. She had br />
merely sat nervously, a fat fumarello in her lower mouth, looking around
the chancery as if she expected to see spies everywhere. Starbuck had
gone as far as to offer them a seventy-thirty split, with him picking up
transportation costs. But the singer had merely said she didn't think it
would work out, and that she couldn't talk about it anyway. When he had
tried to press her on the subject, she had only become more nervous.
Leaving her dressing room, he noticed that her apparent fear of spies was
justified. An Ubbo-Sathla jumped behind a nearby stage curtain.
The next day, as Starbuck sprawled in his room in the guest
quarters, his head throbbing with a hangover, Boomer rushed into the room
and sat on the bed so heavily that the bounce sent waves of pain through
Starbuck's head.
"Out of the bunk, Starbuck. Captain Apollo's sent out a muster
call, and he asked especially for you."
"Boomer, I've been lying her thinking, about what you said last
night. I'm beginning to agree with you. Something's going on around
her. Something----bad."
"Well, whatever it is'll have to wait. We're going to have to go
back to the Galactica."
"What for?"
"Our dress uniforms."
"Dress uniforms? Look, Boomer, I hate dress uniforms and I've got a
head that won't go through one of those tight collars. I'll pass, thank
you very much."
"Starbuck, one does not accept our people's highest honor, the
Golden Cluster, in battle dress."
Boomer's information made Starbuck sit up. Too soon, as it
happened, for his head seemed to explode. No matter. He was too amazed.
"A star cluster? You're kidding!"
"You got it. For that matter, me too. All three of us who went
into that minefield blind. Apollo, too."
Starbuck smiled.
"Hey," he said, "that's all right. Doesn't some kind of pay raise
go with that?"
Boomer laughed, while shaking his head in disbelief.
"You're hopeless," he muttered, "absolutely hopeless."
*****
Serina walked Apollo to the shuttle that was to take him back to the
Galactica to get ready for the awarding of the star cluster and to
respond to a request from his father for a meeting. Boxey and Muffit Two
trailed along behind them.
"It was a wonderful night," she whispered to Apollo.
"For me, too," he said. "And thanks for letting me get all of that
stuff out of my system about Zac. I feel better. It'll take a while for
the guilt to evaporate, as you suggest, but at least I feel better about
myself."
"You should. You're very valuable, Captain Apollo. A walking lode