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“Are you sure it’s safe?” Athena asked again.
Apollo stopped in his tracks. His boot heels squished up a spray of mud from the beach. His exasperation almost got the better of him, but he caught himself. “Yes,” he said, for what felt like the hundredth time since they’d stepped onto this lovely green world. He resumed walking along the ebbing tide, between Athena and Starbuck, with the civilians up ahead. “Yes, it’s safe. This continent is geologically stable. The atmosphere is wholesome. And this system has no sentient or proto-sentient lifeforms.”
“But the Galactica’s scans for complex life keep registering inconclusive. That’s not the same as negative.” Athena tucked her long hair inside the collar of her flight-jacket and buckled its clasps against the ocean wind as they went. “The last time we got readings like those was that ice planet with the Cylon ordnance and the clones.”
“Thetan humans,” Apollo corrected automatically.
Athena frowned. Starbuck turned a guffaw into a cough behind his hand.
Apollo realized how stuffy he sounded and wished he could take the words back. Whatever was up with his sister today, she clearly didn’t need anything else blocking her flight deck. And no Thetans were around to feel diminished by the impolite term.
No one was around, in fact, except the lucky members of this first downside trip, authorized after the fleet had settled into orbit yesterday. They had one class of primary students, including Apollo’s son, Boxey. Then Athena herself, as teacher and shuttle pilot. Cassiopeia, whose medical skills were hopefully unnecessary, but whose psycho-social skills had already proved invaluable herding children who hadn’t set foot on a planet in nearly two yahrens. And Apollo and Starbuck, with their Vipers and blasters, as guards and scouts. It was all but a furlon, as Apollo saw it.
Athena clearly felt otherwise.
“Look,” he reached out and squeezed her shoulder, “why don’t you go and check on your pupils and Cassiopeia? Take point. Let me and Starbuck watch our rear.”
Athena found a tight smile, put her hand over his, and nodded. She strode on ahead.
“Lords,” Starbuck breathed. “I was this close to saying she could take my Viper home now and I’d pilot the shuttle for the kids and Cass later.”
Apollo laughed quietly. He looked back along the shore; they hadn’t come far from where the shuttle and Vipers gleamed under the bright sky. Then he looked ahead to the biology lesson unfolding among reeds and estuary rivulets under the towering, ragged, cave-pocked cliffs that encircled this cove. The contained space was perfect for sand fortresses, a giggling muddy mess, and, before they left, a celebratory skyfire illumination over the water — as well as for Athena’s lesson plan, Apollo expected.
“Do you know what’s bothering her?” Apollo asked Starbuck. “Losing comlines when we came down through that ion field was tense, but it’s not like she doesn’t know all the preparations we make for a planetfall. She used to coordinate them, for Sagan’s sake.” In the shallow water, Apollo spotted a tiny turtur-like creature with a purple shell. He squatted, scooped it up, and held out his cupped hand for Starbuck to see.
“Cute. Not my first choice for something to fill my palms, but to each his own.” Starbuck rocked back on his heels. “Look, uh, about Athena. It’s not just the kids who haven’t been downside in over a yahren, you know.”
“She’s never been ground-shy before.” Apollo frowned. “We grew up on Caprica. You know that.”
“Yeah, I do know that.” Starbuck rolled his eyes. “So, think again, good buddy. You and I landed on a Lambda-class planetoid just a secton ago. When did Athena last set foot on anything with its own gravity?”
“I don’t know. I suppose...” As Apollo thought, he examined the miniature life in his hand. He loved getting to explore new systems, new worlds, the ever-unfolding new frontiers of creation. It was ironic that Blue Squadron’s star-scouting duties granted its pilots more downside experiences than anyone in the fleet — except the agro techs, when they were lucky enough to find safe forage, like on this promising planet. Harvest operations would start tomorrow. But Athena wasn’t an agro tech, and she hadn’t piloted a Viper since…
Apollo felt like a ton of fuel cartridges had just landed on his chest.
“Kobol.”
Starbuck pursed his lips.
The last time that Athena had left the fleet, a Cylon had killed Serina, widowing Apollo and orphaning Boxey. Was the Battle of Kobol also the last time that Athena had piloted... anything? Apollo was surprised to find that he didn’t know much about her life lately. Kobol had certainly been the last time that she had worn the brown uniform that she had on today. And that battle — which had cost them not only Serina, but Jamie, Sorrel, Gaya, and others who had trained and fought alongside Athena in that desperate, hasty muster — had been, what... just sectons before Athena had started talking about taking instruction to become a much-needed primary teacher? Apollo remembered when she’d brought it up for the first time at their father’s table; the warriors present had laughed off the idea of a Core Command officer turning “schoolmarm.” So she’d brought it up again. And again. Until it had sunk in that she was neither joking nor asking permission.
Apollo hadn’t realized. Hadn’t wanted to? The puzzle fell into place now with such a little nudge. He returned the turtur-like creature to a rivulet at his feet. It swam away to the sea and didn’t look back.
“You okay?” Starbuck asked.
“I’ll be fine. Will she?” Apollo stood. “I’d thought she was being impulsive when she stepped down from her command post. Father thinks she’s heroically self-sacrificing. Did you know he’d hoped she’d succeed him to command the Galactica one day? It never occurred to me that she might really be, what do they call it, administering self-therapy.”
“Any reason it can’t be both?” Starbuck watched the waves for a moment. He looked back at Apollo. “Anyway, give yourself a break. You’ve had a few things on your mind. Cylons. Baltar. Count Iblis. The Council of Twelve. The Eastern Alliance. Muffit’s malfunctions since the fire.”
Apollo almost smiled. Trust Starbuck to class an android daggit that couldn’t sleep through the night with the biggest threats the fleet had faced. And to tally only wins, not losses. Like Serina. And Zac. “I’m her brother. If you noticed...”
“Actually, uh, no.” Starbuck pushed his windblown hair out of his eyes. “Credit Cass. Her psychology training, you know? She worried it might come up on this jaunt.”
“Ah.” Apollo did smile this time. “Well, I won’t fault myself for not being as insightful as Cassiopeia. But now that I know—”
“Don’t go rushing in to ‘fix’ this, yeah?” Starbuck cocked his head. “Athena puts a lot of responsibility on herself. She tries to sound cheerful all the time, but—”
“I think I know my sister, Starbuck.”
“Right. So, uh, for the sake of argument, when she was Boxy’s age, what did she want to be when she grew up?”
“I remember a phase where she wanted to race kamelos from Borella.” Apollo snorted. He hadn’t thought of that in yahrens. “Zac always wanted to be a warrior, though. From his cradle.” Zac would have loved being Boxey’s uncle, Apollo thought, not for the first time.
“And you wanted to be a deep-star explorer,” Starbuck said. “But you all three ended up as warriors.”
“With the war, what other choice was there?” Apollo dropped his voice as they reached the children. He watched Boxey and two of his classmates run, laughing, after a scuttling pink crustacean. Apollo remembered how he had encouraged Boxey to dream of being a warrior, first to jolly him out of an alarming depression in those desperate early days, but later because it was all he knew to do. Apollo suddenly wanted to tell Boxey to grow up to be the head of the Council, or a journalist like his mother, or a genetic tracer or medtech or dancer, whatever would make him happy. But unless they found Earth... “What other choice is there, now?”
“Apollo—” Starbuck started. Then he shook his head. “You know, I see a lovely medtech who could use some help getting a boy down from a rock before he collects a lesson in planetary gravity.” Starbuck maneuvered through the children to Cassiopeia.
Apollo circled the perimeter toward Athena.
“Boxy, empty your pockets. You, too, Loma.” Athena held her computape coder, though Apollo thought the device would be hard-pressed to either recite or record data under these conditions. “And Marron— okay, everyone turn out your pockets and open your hands. That’s right. What did we learn about the integrity of independent ecosystems, both natural and artificial?”
Apollo joined the impromptu inspection, gently persuading children to return minerals, flora, and even an echinoderm to their biome.
Suddenly, a child’s scream began. As abruptly, it collapsed into a sob.
“Apollo!” Starbuck shouted.
Apollo had already jumped to his feet, drawn his laser, and spun. He put himself in front of the child he’d been helping. Out of the corners of his eyes, Apollo saw that Starbuck and Athena had done the same, though Athena pointed her coder in place of the weapon she wasn’t carrying.
And, oh, Lords! Boxy had imitated them. With a stone in hand, he stood in front of his playmates.
A squad of twelve human warriors — their stance, formation, and uniform lichen-green garments could mean nothing else to Apollo’s eyes — had emerged from a fissure. They formed a semi-circle surrounding the class against the cliff. Each held a shooting weapon, though whether energy or projectile, Apollo couldn’t tell; half aimed at the sky, and half at the four adults from the fleet. Male and female, all these warriors had short reddish hair and bronze skin; if they weren’t related, then their people were more phenotypically homogeneous than the survivors of the Twelve Colonies, though not as much as Thetans.
“We mean no harm,” Athena said. She holstered her coder as if it were a laser and spread her hands; Apollo hoped her gesture would register as a peaceful, diplomatic overture, and not as an acknowledgement that the coder was no threat in any case. “We thought this planet was unoccupied.”
Silently, several of the strangers’ gazes flickered toward a warrior in the center of their line, shorter than most of the others, with her eyebrows drawn close and her lips pressed together. Given the clue of the others’ deference, Apollo looked for and found subtle differences in the woman’s insignia. He took her for the ranking officer.
The woman looked at Athena and said … something.
Apollo’s jaw dropped. Even the people of Terra had spoken Colonial-standard.
“Friends. Amikoj. Sahibay.” Cassiopeia tried. “Cairde?” She slowly put her hands up in the air and pointed toward the slight little girl — Marron? — who had screamed, and who now had her hands clapped over her mouth, and tears streaming down her cheeks. “I am going to the child. All right? We all understand about children, yes?”
“Cass…” Starbuck breathed.
“Hold that thought.” Cassiopeia kept her tone soft and even. Apollo watched her watch the stranger officer and begin to step deliberately, directly toward Marron, her hands still up and open. When Cassiopeia reached the child, she knelt down next to her, and didn’t lower her hands until she had an armful of little girl to embrace. “It’s okay, Marron. It’s going to be okay. We’re all humans here.”
The officer gave a command. The strangers’ drawn weapons re-aimed from the four adults to just Starbuck and Apollo.
“Fair enough,” Apollo said. The strangers were ignoring Boxey’s rock, thank the Lords; Cassiopeia had surely banked on that cue, too. “Starbuck, I’m going to lower my laser and see what happens.”
Starbuck grunted. “You never get to criticize my gaming systems as risky ever again, got it?”
“Got it, buddy.” Apollo unhurriedly spread his hands and holstered his laser.
The officer’s lips twitched. She spoke one word. All but two of her warriors’ drawn weapons now scanned the sky. The last two swung on Starbuck.
“Okay, okay,” Starbuck said. “All in.” He also holstered his laser. “Happy now?”
The officer spoke again, several sentences this time. Her squad dissolved into three groups of four, which extracted Athena’s coder and Apollo and Starbuck’s lasers from their holsters almost before they knew what was happening, and then reformed their line. The warrior who had previously looked back at the fissure in the cliff now disappeared inside it.
“Class,” Athena spoke in a soft, even tone, like Cassiopeia’s, “just in case, I want you to remember our exodus drills. Stick with your trio. Form up on me or Cassiopeia if you can. Boxey, slowly put down that rock. Now.”
“But Athena—”
Apollo swallowed hard. “A junior warrior’s ranking officer is his teacher.”
Boxy put down the rock.
Out of the fissure in the cliff, the warrior who had gone returned, followed by a bearded older man wearing a white, many-pocketed vest over the same pale-green uniform as the others. He carried a leather satchel suspended from one shoulder. The warriors gave him the coder and lasers; he inspected them and tucked them into his bag. After a short exchange with the strangers’ officer, the bearded man extracted three faceted crystal grids from different pockets of his garment and arranged them on the sand.
“You should not have come here,” the officer said. Or, rather, the crystal grids translated for her, in the echoing monotone of a Cylon. It almost drowned her own human voice. “Do you understand?”
Apollo looked from her to the grids and back. “We mean no harm. I am Captain Apollo of the Battlestar Galactica, of the Twelve Colonies of Man.” The grids translated his words back in the strangers’ language, this time in human tones and cadence. “Did you get that linguistic technology from the—”
“The two-hundred-twenty ships that orbit us now: what will they do if you do not return to them?”
Apollo felt all the eyes on him. “They’ll send others to find us.”
“And if those others find you dead? Of an inimical, endemic factor?”
Apollo felt like he’d flash-frozen in the vacuum of space. He wished for Starbuck’s poker face and hoped the children didn’t understand the implication. Did the officer mean to rattle him only, or did she really want to find out? The fleet would mourn and move on, Apollo knew, though the death of so many children at once would sorely test the survivors’ fragile social harmony. He dared not spare even a fleeting thought for what it would do to Adama. “That translator sounds Cylon. Are you allied with the Cylon Empire?”
The officer laughed bitterly. Several of her warriors scowled. One cursed — courtesy of the grids — and re-aimed his weapon at Apollo. “We are people,” the officer said. “You are Cylons.”
“No!” Athena protested. “We’re human, like you.”
“Cylons are outsiders; outsiders are Cylons!” The officer snapped back. The grids lagged; they seemed to struggle with the vocabulary. “Our ancestors fled to this planet after Cylons razed our homeworld. We have survived a thousand yahren here, under natural ion fields and artificed pulse shields, by allowing no Cylon to return with news of us. You will be no exception. Come. The Council debates now whether to trick your ships or destroy them — and whether you must die to drive them off, or may have another fate.”
Her warriors formed a line to the entry into the cliffs, and again aimed their weapons at Apollo, Athena, and Starbuck. But not at Cassiopeia, with Marron in her arms.
Cassiopeia said, “Some of the children have allergies. If we’re going to go with you, they need their medicine from our shuttle.”
Apollo raised his eyebrows at Athena. She blinked and tapped her empty holster, which Apollo took as confirmation that Cassiopeia’s request wasn’t what it appeared. If any of the children had needed medicine, Cassiopeia would have carried it, or, more likely, that child would have stayed in orbit. Apollo’s gaze flicked to Starbuck, who tipped his chin in the faintest nod. If Cassiopeia had a tell, Apollo thought, Starbuck would be the one to read it.
“We have physicians and pharmaceuticals,” said the bearded man, also translated by the grids. “Live or die, none of you need suffer. Come.”
“I don’t know whether your medicines will work.” Cassiopeia picked up Marron and stood. Marron buried her face in Cassiopeia’s shoulder, and Cassiopeia walked toward the line of warriors blocking her way. “Pardon me. Our shuttle is right there.”
The warriors held their ground, but some looked… abashed? Under other circumstances, Apollo would have loved to explore their culture. But with Boxey, Starbuck, and Athena’s lives on the line, not to mention the other children and Cassiopeia — and the fleet — Apollo almost wished these people were Cylons after all. Machines. Tin-cans. Soul-less and unmourned.
Among the Twelve Colonies, human hadn’t warred on human in a thousand yahrens.
“Fine.” The officer let out a heavy breath. “Form up! Escort them to their vehicle to collect their remedies. Then set the charges.”
Her warriors split into two lines and herded the people from the fleet between them. They let Cassiopeia lead, and Starbuck somehow sidled his way up to her. The children pressed close behind. Apollo and Athena, they kept at the rear.
“We did not expect children,” the officer said. “You are the first Cylons ever to bring children.”
“We’re not Cylons!” Athena said again. “The Cylons destroyed our homeworlds, too. They murdered our brother,” she gestured to Apollo, “our mother, his wife, ninety-four billion humans...”
The translation had stopped almost as soon as Athena had begun. The officer sniffed and shook her head. Apollo glanced over his shoulder at the bearded man, who had put the grids back in his bag and now trotted after them. Then Apollo looked over the shuttle to the Vipers parked close by, tucked into the curve of the cove.
The shuttle opened to Cassiopeia’s touch. Serenely, she said, “Starbuck, I want you to look for the medical kit stowed behind the pilot’s chair. We need to release it.”
“Uh, right.” Starbuck moved inside, hands raised and open.
Apollo was almost positive there was no med kit behind the pilot’s seat. But what there was, somewhere aboard, this trip… Clever, resourceful, observant Cassiopeia! Starbuck didn’t deserve her, and if they all made it back to the Galactica, Apollo would tell him so. Better, Apollo would tell her.
Cassiopeia turned a small, defeated smile to the strangers. She kept her movements slow, large, and clear, and stepped inside the shuttle just far enough to settle Marron into a seat, in plain sight of the open door. “Just relax.” Cassiopeia got a bottle of mild decontamination tablets from the kit on the wall, and gave one to Marron, who made a face at the taste. Quietly, smoothly, Cassiopeia called in another child, seated him, and administered another tablet. Another child, another tablet.
The strangers’ officer gave an order. Six of her warriors deployed to the sides of the shuttle and the two Vipers. They each unhooked a canister from their belts and cracked it open to apply a yellow gel slab to the craft’s exterior. Then they returned to their line formation and stepped back behind the officer and the bearded man.
Had they not noticed that almost all the children were now inside the shuttle?
Apollo felt Athena deliberately bump his shoulder with hers. Yes, he knew: the gel slabs were probably explosives. Yes, the standard military-grade doric-pulse coating should pop them right off as soon as the vehicles powered up, but there was no way to know for sure. Apollo didn’t think they had a choice. The children. The fleet. Apollo tapped Athena’s hand in silent acknowledgement.
As soon as the last child was settled, Cassiopeia, still moving so very slowly, pressed the lock. The shuttle door slid closed.
Immediately, Apollo and Athena ducked.
From the pilot’s seat, Starbuck jettisoned and ignited all the combustible dust meant for a celebratory skyfire illumination at the end of the visit. The fine particles detonated with an explosive shockwave that knocked over the strange warriors and set some bits of clothing on fire.
Apollo ran for his Viper. As he climbed in, jammed on his helmet, and flipped the control toggles, he heard the shuttle surge and lift. When his own Viper began its vertical take-off, Apollo looked up from his instruments, hoping to see Starbuck’s Viper lifting, too.
Instead, he saw Athena still running, her hair streaming behind her. She clutched the bearded man’s satchel to her chest.
If they made it back to the Galactica alive, Lords help him, Apollo was going to kill her.
Apollo fired his Viper’s lasers at the sea, vaporizing cubic maxims of water. That jolted her pursuers, but not enough. A Viper’s armaments weren’t meant for atmosphere, and even less for quarters as close as this cove. He didn’t dare try to aim between his sister and the other humans. But they were gaining on her. He fired his lasers at the cliff. Boulders tumbled down.
Athena scrambled into Starbuck’s Viper with her prize and took off.
“Whoo-hoo!” Starbuck’s voice came over the comline. “Clearing the atmosphere now.”
“Hold the jubilee,” Apollo said. “What about those gel explosives? My instruments say mine haven’t fallen off yet.”
“Nor mine,” Athena said.
“Huh. Ours, either. Try increasing the power flow to the hull,” Starbuck said. “Frack, that didn’t do it.”
“Running diagnostics,” Athena said. “Something’s not right— this Viper isn’t responding.”
“Neither is the shuttle.” Starbuck’s tone was suddenly precise and clipped. “It’s handling like a freight container now. Those aren’t explosives. They’re zonar scramblers.”
Apollo ground his teeth. A zonar scrambler would have doomed Cylon craft. It did no favors for Colonial pilots. “With our stabilizers out, they expect us to crash like cadets on a first simulation. We won’t be able to communicate with the fleet unless we can get above that ion field, so it’ll look like an accident, not an attack.” Apollo took a deep breath. “Starbuck, you have to land.”
“What? No. No, no! We can do this, Apollo. I don’t need stabilizers to baby this workhorse up through the ion field. And then the sanitation ship can tow us in for all I care. I can do this, I swear.”
Apollo’s heart was in his throat. “All right. Lead us home, Starbuck.”
“Good. Keep the shuttle climbing. But. Um.” Athena’s voice faded. “This Viper really isn’t responding.”
“Our helmets’ phrenic interface isn’t working.” Apollo struggled with his own Viper’s controls. Responses were sluggish and clumsy, when they came at all. He felt a creeping horror that the fighters might fall back into the gravity well below. As long as the shuttle didn’t, he told himself. Nothing mattered like getting the shuttle back to the Galactica with the children and the intelligence of the planet’s population. “Think of it as how our ancestors piloted their sub-light rockets, wholly mechanical, taking star sightings for direction.”
“You’re the history buff.” Athena laughed shakily. “Give me a proper computron any cycle.”
Apollo could hear the fear she swallowed because he felt the same. What had Starbuck said, that she tried to always look cheerful…? “Athena, sight on me. I’ll sight on the shuttle. Starbuck—”
“Taking us home, Captain.”
The shuttle pulled away up through the ion field. Apollo was grateful to his marrow that Starbuck, of all the pilots in the fleet, was at the controls. And that shuttles depended much less on zonar than Vipers did.
As the ion field deepend and the shuttle pulled ahead, its comlink fuzzed away into nothing. Behind, the two Vipers flew in such tight formation that their link stayed intact, but Athena fell silent, anyway. They each fought their machines and the elements for every metric rise.
Too soon, Apollo lost his lock on the shuttle. He picked a star to guide them and didn’t tell Athena.
Maybe she knew, anyway. In his head, his sister had still been all headlong energy and boundless enthusiasm, as he’d known her in the times before. It hadn’t been before in a long time. To draw her out, he said, “Quite a planetfall, huh?” She didn’t laugh at him, or remind him that she’d told them so, or explain why she’d gone for that bag. He tried again. “We’re going to make it. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Athena said. Moments passed, and then she asked, “Will you?”
“What?”
“You get to land on all sorts of planets all the time, Viper-boy. And almost every planetfall — never mind this one — seems to add guilt for you. I think it’s been building since Kobol.”
“Hey, no—” Apollo protested. He did not, would not, feel guilty about those they’d lost. Not even Serina. Not even Zac. That would make his mourning about him instead of about them.
“Mission after mission.” Once started, Athena didn’t pause. “You feel selfish that you get to explore all these worlds. Admit it, Apollo! Deep-star exploration is now actually your job. You got one dream in our asteroid belt of nightmares, and you think you have to pay for it by finding Earth. You. Personally. Savior of us all.”
Apollo started to object, but no words came. He closed his mouth.
“Well, you don’t. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if it’s there, we’ll find it. With or without you.”
“Ouch.”
“See, you’re taking it the wrong way. Apollo, you’re allowed to learn how to be happy again. Anew. Now. It’s different, being happy now. You know?”
“I’ll take your word for it.” And he had been going to talk to her about Kobol! Where Apollo had always been the one with a plan, Athena had led with a feeling. Zac had been the deciding vote. All Apollo’s busy new awareness earlier about the past two yahrens from Athena’s perspective, and she’d clearly already broken through to air; she’d put on her own breather and was reaching back with one for him. Sheba had said something similar not too long ago, but Athena’s candid nudge was harder to dismiss. “Thank you. I think. That’s a long patrol’s worth of reflection you’ve given me.”
They broke through the ion layer. The comlinks reconnected. “Blue Squadron Vipers, this is Core Command. The shuttle is safe aboard the Celestra. Do you read?”
“Acknowledged, Core Command!” Athena said. “Rigel, I have never been so happy to hear your voice.”
“You, too, Athena. We have a tow-barge waiting for you. Captain Apollo, I’ve been ordered to say it twice so that you’ll believe your ears: all shuttle passengers are safe.”
“Acknowledged, Lieutenant!” Apollo smiled so hard his cheeks hurt. “Tell the Commander that I urgently advise we break orbit.”
“We are in progress to fall back to the far side of the gas giant, Captain. Prepare for the tow-barge, please.”
The comlink went silent again, but this silence bulged with the bustle of the fleet, the constant company of crowded spaces, the thrum of the familiar. For all the relief that Apollo felt, he suspected that Athena might be right. His heart might be more in flying away from the Galactica than toward her. And yet his heart was also in the Galactica — or, at the moment, the Celestra. And the Galactica. And the Viper beside him.
“Apollo?” Athena asked. “When you’ve finished that ‘long patrol,’ want to talk again? Just us.”
It sounded so easy. Why hadn’t they done that before?
“Yes,” Apollo told his sister. “Yes, very much.”
✧ end ✧