Chapter 3:

It eventually began to dawn on Urdea that the chance of finding anyone alive was becoming increasingly remote.

He started down another former street, now littered with debris from the collapsed buildings. He was still dodging from point to point, when in the distance, he saw a human shape emerging from the smoke. Keeping low, he tightened his grip on his blaster pistol, in case it turned out to be the Cylon. It came directly toward him, as if it knew in advance Urdea's exact position. Urdea aimed the pistol directly at the figure as it neared, but he hesitated on firing, as his eyes began to take in the sight of the figure. It was a thin human male figure, wearing the uniform of a Colonial Warrior!

Its hair looked unkempt, as if waving in the breeze. Though he tried to make it out, it was difficult to see the face until it was only a few metrons in front of him, as if smoke was clinging to its skin, obscuring it with a type of waviness. As the man raised his hand, pointing it directly toward Urdea, the sense of waviness vanished, and Urdea suddenly felt his heart grasped with a fear he'd never felt before, even when thinking of going one on one with the Centurion. Standing directly in front of him, he saw the dead figure of Joster!

For the first time in his life, he was experiencing a real panic attack, with his breath coming in short bursts and sweat almost boiling from his pores. He recoiled from the figure, trying to get away, but the sight of ghostly Joster's upturned hand seemed to arrest his escape. He stopped struggling, and the Joster shade pointed his index finger directly at him and mouthed those accusing silent words again, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem." This time, however, the shade curled the index toward itself, as if to say, "Come."

The Joster ghost turned away, and made its way down the rubble-filled course that was once the street, with a reluctant Urdea following a few moments later, only a short distance behind.

Within fifty metrons, the Joster ghost came to a halt, and pointed to a yet another pile of rubble. Urdea tilted his head slightly to the right, wondering what the ghost wanted, until he saw it mouth the silent words again, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem."

Urdea wondered why anything to do with the safety system would be there, but considering his problem with sleeping, he decided he would try to figure it out. He removed several sections of debris as quietly as he could, in an attempt to keep from alerting the missing Centurion. He winced at the noise, hoping that it would either not carry far, or would be perceived by the Cylon as just another building section falling.

On shifting the last section, he saw a small shaft extending downward into the ground. Joster again pointed, this time directly down the hole, and mouthed wordlessly, "Safe-ty sys-tem. Safe-ty sys-tem."

Urdea whispered, "Yeah, yeah," rather sarcastically to himself, and then started into the hole. He noticed that the ghost was not coming with him.

At the base of the steep stairs, the cellar floor flattened out. The small room had two exits in addition to the way he'd come. Seeing nothing of interest in the room, he carefully opened the nearest door, and found nothing but shelves covered with some type of supplies. Nothing looked like a "safety system" to Urdea, so he closed the door quietly behind him. Next, he tried the second door, but found the latch resisted his attempt to raise it. From his position next to the doorjamb, he listened intently for a few microns. He thought he heard something inside, so he raised the handle once more. Feeling it give slightly but not open, he curled his right hand into a fist, and tapped on the door very lightly with his knuckles.

From inside, he heard a very small, "Who is it?" followed immediately by at least two hissed "Shhh!"s.

His face broke into a small half-grin for the first time since he'd landed the shuttle. Urdea whispered back, "Quiet! I'm a friend, here to help. Open the door."

A moment of hesitation was followed by a scraping and a click of the latch, and then the door swung a short way into the room. Urdea, with his blaster pistol pointed straight up, peeked around the corner before drawing his head back quickly. In the brief glance, he'd seen a couple of young children huddled together behind a crate.

He stepped into the room with the pistol in the lead and immediately had to dodge to avoid a board that came swinging from behind the door. He slammed into the door, knocking into the side of his attacker, as he raised his left arm to absorb much of the force of the blow. Dropping the pistol and raising his other arm, he caught the piece of wood and yanked it down and around, pulling the trailing figure behind it. As he did, the force of the action caused him to twist, making him loose his balance on the bad leg. Falling, he saw that his attacker was a slim, young woman whose eyes suddenly widened in shock as she realized she was attacking not only someone possibly there to help but maybe even a Colonial Warrior!

Urdea landed directly on her, becoming entangled with her as he said, "Sorry, Miss!" He rolled to the side, pulling the board out of her hands. He grabbed his blaster pistol from where it had fallen on the floor and, as he rose to one knee, he shoved it into the holster. He quickly held out both hands as if to show he meant no harm, saying in a hushed tone, "Hold on, I'm really here to help!"

She was a mess, but she looked at him with fiery eyes, as if she was ready to launch herself at him to tear him to shreds if he even looked the wrong way at the children. On looking closer, he realized that she was probably only seventeen or eighteen yahrens of age, if that.

She hesitated for a moment to give him a chance to prove himself, although from her look, he knew that she was not going to give him long. It took a couple of centons to convince her, including showing the retired patch on his jacket to make her believe he wasn't just a cowardly deserter who'd allowed the destruction above to occur.

When the girl finally relaxed slightly, showing that she had begun to believe him, he glanced around the room, and seeing no computer or other mechanical equipment of note that might possibly be a safety system, he said, "No time to talk now. We've got to get out of here. Be very quiet and follow me."

The girl nodded, signaling the two younger boys, who appeared to be about five or six and maybe eight or nine yahrens, to follow quietly. As they neared the top of the stairs, Urdea signaled them to stop as he crept forward to check out the area around the entrance. His blaster in hand, he stuck his head up just above the level of the entrance and began to turn—

A low whir from behind was the only warning. Incredible pain shot through him as Urdea felt something clench his right shoulder. In one motion, his entire body was jerked off the ground and out of the shaft. He was flying through the air a moment later, crashing against a wall almost four metrons away. He rolled as he slammed into the ground below and came up to see a bright chrome and black shape stepping toward him.

He raised his blaster to fire as he rolled away, but the Cylon hit it, sweeping it away. The centurion grabbed for him again, but Urdea scampered backward, trying to escape. He looked around frantically, wondering if there was anything useful to fight Cylons but saw nothing. His blaster pistol was much too far away to be retrieved, especially when he didn't even know exactly where it had landed.

Suddenly, he saw Joster standing well behind the centurion, pointing to the ground. The Cylon, which he saw was unarmed, grabbed again, this time catching his right foot, and then swung him around like a doll, releasing him after he'd traveled through an arc of over 150 degrees.

Urdea rolled again as he landed, but he was unable to regain his feet due to the rapidly approaching Cylon. He continued to backpedal toward the Joster shade, wondering if the "safety system" to which the Joster shade kept referring was actually the safety on his blaster pistol!

He was within about a metron of the pistol when the Cylon again grabbed him, this time latching firmly onto Urdea's left ankle. As the robot jerked to throw him again, Urdea slammed his left hand against the side of his leg and pulled upward.

The centurion continued its arc with Urdea's prosthetic leg coming out of his trousers, but this made the robot off balance, causing it to stumble. Urdea, having hit the quick release mechanism on his implant, rolled to his right as the leg detached, and he scampered the last metron to the spot Joster was indicating on his hands and knees.

He grabbed the blaster from below Joster's ghost, double checking that the safety was off as he whirled, and, lying on his back on the ground, fired.

The plasma blast hit the approaching Cylon full in the chest plate, knocking it backward. The red eye swung unsteadily, then flickered, dying, as the robot fell backward onto the ground. It remained still.

Moments later, Urdea found his prosthesis still in the boot. As he fumbled with his pants leg and reattached it to the implant, he looked back at the Joster shade, standing just above the shaft entrance. Urdea said, "Thank you, my friend. I couldn't have done it without you."

For the first time, the ghost seemed to be almost smiling. Its lips suddenly started moving, taking Urdea by surprise. It had delivered, again for the first time, a different message! True to form, the Joster ghost repeated the statement. Urdea, watching as intently as he could, the second time anyway, guessed that the ghost was saying, "Thank you for sav-ing my sys-tem."

He nodded, but turned in surprise when the girl exited the shaft asking, "Who were you talking to?"

Urdea turned to show her, but Joster was gone. Helping the youngsters up, he replied, "Just an old friend, I guess. I think he may be gone now. Permanently, I hope."

She looked at him quizzically but said nothing. The small group went quickly through the remnants of the town, and arrived at the shuttle shortly before dark.

As he launched, Urdea used the shuttle's longer-range comm, on a scrambled channel, to send out an emergency distress call. The girl settled into the co-pilots seat without invitation, and the boys were seated in the back. Moments later, a female voice responded, "Galactica Control to Shuttle 742-Delta Tau, come in. You'll have to join us quickly. The fleet is preparing to depart as we speak."

"This is Lieutenant Urdea, retired, of the Colonial Warrior Corps. There's been an attack at Kenkillen on Libra, and I need to speak to someone about what's happened—"

There was a sharp intake of breath from the seat next to him, but before he could see what was wrong, a new, somewhat familiar voice came over the system, "Former Ensign Urdea, is it? This is Colonel Tigh of the Battlestar Galactica."

Urdea smiled, briefly, now recognizing the voice.

"You're not retired any more, my friend. We've got a Colonies-wide emergency, with attacks all over. If you don't want to be left behind, you'll join the fleet at the coordinates being sent by scrambled code, along with your reinstatement papers, within the next centar. Like I said, if you don't show up, you'll be left behind and on your own. You can file your report when you arrive. For now, stay off the comm, old friend. Tigh, out."

Urdea received the coordinates, and the reactivation notice. He couldn't believe they would use that clause on him, especially Tigh, under whom he had served for a time some yahrens before, but just in case, he decided to be a good little soldier, and follow "orders." He punched the coordinates into his navigation system.

As they covered the space between Libra and the "fleet" at a high rate of speed, not worrying about conserving fuel like usual, the boys ate heartily on a couple of the packaged meals from the storage locker. The girl, on the other hand, disappeared into the back by herself for a long while immediately after the comm discussion. He assumed she was cleaning herself up.

When she finally came forward, he saw that she had indeed done her best to make herself look presentable, and, if anything, somewhat younger. He now estimated she was around fifteen or possibly sixteen yahrens of age. She joined him without comment or invitation, sitting down once more in the copilot's chair. She looked away, out the viewshield, ignoring Urdea entirely.

They sat in silence for a while, but it finally started to bother him, so Urdea decided to try to bring her out of the shell in which she seemed to have wrapped herself.

"Well, we'll be there, wherever there is, shortly, and maybe we'll get some answers then. By the way, my name's Urdea. How are you and your brothers?"

On hearing his name again, she'd looked at him sharply, with a glaring look of hatred in her eyes, but it seemed to soften after a few moments. She said quietly, "They're not my brothers, and I don't even think they're related. I found them wandering in town, looking for their mothers. My mother and my little brother were killed by one of those ships last night."

"I'm so sorry," he said, but she interrupted, continuing, "My big brother was a Colonial Warrior who was killed in an accident about two yahrens ago. I have no one left now…and my name's Jostine."

Urdea turned incredulously to look at her, just staring at him, and saw the family resemblance for the first time. "Sis-ter!" he thought to himself. "Not system! Save my sis-ter! Maybe I should have studied lip reading after all!"

He tried again to express his sorrow to her about her losses, but her brief speech seemed to have exhausted her. She paid him no further attention, turning instead to the viewshield. Lost in her own thoughts, she focused only on the shining lights of a rag-tag collection of ships that were just ahead.

The End


Follow-up Notes:

October 2016: There were religious overtones and occasional elements of the supernatural in the original Battlestar Galactica series. Since I've used a bit of that here and since this has close ties to a certain season on the Earth calendar, I've taken the liberty to accept a suggestion received long ago to split this story into three chapters and make a few minor edits for readability purposes.

If you enjoy this story, or if for some reason you don't, please take a moment to review to let me know why. Constructive criticism, both positive and negative, is welcome. Previous comments have already helped me correct a few errors and hopefully improve readability, so your input does count.

Urdea and Jostine return in some of my later stories along with many of our canon BSG favorites. Please see my profile page for a suggested reading order for my other BSG stories.

Thanks,

VST