Chapter 11
A Good and Faithful Wife
Hades, new god of the Underworld, beholden to his brother for his fortune.
Zeus is magnanimous. Pick the place where you would dwell and there shall be
The realm of immortal souls. Hades finds a place of deep valleys and high meadows at
The convergence of five rivers and there he creates a dwelling place for the departed.
Tartarus is the deepest level of the Underworld, the gloomy pit of punishment for sinners.
Elysium is the beautiful and sunny meadow of reward for the pious and just.
And the Blessed Isles where golden apples grow becomes the home of great heroes.
For many years Hades rules the Underworld in solitary majesty and finally
In his loneliness seeks a bride. But none wish to live in the realm of the dead.
Hades roams the land and one day spies a beautiful maiden, Persephone,
Daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and grains and seasons.
Enchanted by her beauty, Hades steals her and takes her away to his realm and
Makes her his queen. Demeter laments her lost daughter and searches the land,
Ignoring the fields and crops, forgetting the seasons, leaving the earth in the
Grip of winter. Zeus finally heeds the cries of the hungry and forces Hades
To return Persephone to her mother. The land blossoms at their reunion.
And when Hades reclaims his bride, Demeter's sorrow brings autumn and
Winter back to the land. Posiden says to Zeus, There is only one solution.
His brother agrees. For part of the year Persephone will dwell with her mother
And for part of the year with her husband. A small gift, Zeus says to his brother,
A mother's joy and a mother's loss give to Mankind the Gift of Changing Seasons.
- Kataris, from A Poet's Dream, The Torches of Other Worlds
.
Lee stared at the Raptor pilot who had come to pick them up, still surprised at who it was.
Kendra nudged him. "It looks like you two know each other. Want to introduce me?"
"Kenda, this is Maggie Edmondson, call sign Racetrack. Maggie, this is Kendra Shaw."
Maggie gave Kendra a half-smile. "So you're the lucky one who got stuck with Lee for this mission. We heard he had a partner."
"I'm not sure I'd call it stuck with, but he and I get to run interference for Commander Cain and Dr. Nylund."
Maggie's smile got a little broader. She was apparently enjoying that idea of Lee having to deal on a daily basis with a commander and a scientist who both had reputations for being difficult.
"I thought you were flying out of the airbase back on Caprica," Lee said.
"I volunteered for this mission. Colonel Spencer asked a few of us. Flat Top and Crashdown decided they'd do it, too, just to get off Caprica. We'd like to see what the Cylons really did five years ago. It might do you good to get another perspective. Maybe it will be an eye opener for you."
Lee noticed the sarcasm of her last sentence. He was well aware of how much Maggie hated the Cylons. Kara had told him that Maggie's father had been a Raptor pilot on the Solaria. He had died when the battlestar had been destroyed during the early days of the fighting. Her mother had later died during the flu epidemic in the refugee camp where Kara and Maggie had met. Kara had introduced Karl to Maggie and the two of them had a relationship that had lasted until well after they had all left the camp and moved to Caprica City together. It had ended before they had gone to the Academy and Maggie had moved on and begun dating Zak. Karl had started dating Sharon Valerii. Kara felt like Maggie had carried her love for Karl for a long time and maybe still had some unresolved feelings for him. Kara also felt like that was why Maggie had shown such hostility toward Sharon.
Lee also knew that Maggie and Karl had almost gotten into a fight outside the men's locker room at the base shortly after it had been revealed that Sharon, now Karl's wife, was a Cylon. Lee wasn't all that surprised that Maggie had volunteered for a mission that would get her off Caprica for a few months.
"What do you hear from Zak?" Lee asked.
Maggie gave him a skeptical look. "You don't talk to your own brother?"
"Last weekend," he said defensively.
She shrugged. "He wasn't too happy about me volunteering for this mission, but I wasn't overjoyed when he joined the Marines either. And it's not like we're able to see each other now. A couple of guys in Zak's unit were wounded last week."
"I talked to him after that," Lee said quickly. "Zak's fine."
"This time. But where he is, that could change at any minute."
"It could for any of us," Kendra said. "Maybe we can sit down and have a nice chat over a cup of tea later, but we need to get to the Galactica right now. Commander Cain is waiting for us."
"After you," Maggie said coolly and pointed to the ramp. "Climb aboard and make yourselves comfortable. I've got a report to sign. Lee understands. He's a pilot."
Maggie's copilot and ECO Skulls had remained on board. He acknowledged them with a nod and then turned around and busied himself with looking at something going on in the hangar.
"Friendly crew, aren't they?" Kendra said.
Lee shrugged. Later he might tell her why he got the cold shoulder from a lot of the pilots. Most of it had to do with Kara's relationship with Sharon and Karl. She stood by her friends and that hadn't gone over well with many of the others as soon as they had found out what Sharon was. Of course with everything that Kendra seemed to know, she had probably already figured that out.
Maggie got on board and sat in the pilot's seat. The Raptor door descended and the elevator lowered them into the landing bay. Maggie's takeoff was as flawless as her landing on the Galactica five minutes later. Kara had told him that Maggie was a good Raptor pilot, cool and fearless and dedicated. She had finished second in the Raptor division in their Flight School class and fourth overall, coming in only a few points behind Dwight Saunders who had taken the top Raptor honors.
There were times Lee wondered what would have happened if he and Kara had been in the same class. Their flying styles were very different. Kara's style was more seat-of-the-pants, instinct where his was more cerebral. John had once told Lee that he tended to over-think in the cockpit, yet John worried about Kara because she didn't think enough.
For a few moments Lee let his thoughts wander to Nereid. Where was Kara and what was she doing right now? What had she done with the Raider? Had she been captured? Kara was a survivor. She was tough. But would she survive Nereid?
As Maggie smoothly brought the Raptor into Galactica's port landing bay, Lee had to admit that he felt excitement grip him at being aboard a battlestar once again. The last time he had been on the G, he had been seventeen and visiting his father when the Cylons had attacked. The experience had tipped his decision toward attending the Academy and becoming a pilot instead of attending the university and then going to law school like his Grandfather Adama had wanted him to do. He had never regretted his decision. He had never looked back.
Becoming a pilot has cost him a relationship, but because of it he had been free when he had met Kara. She had once told him that an Oracle had foretold their love. He had laughed. He didn't feel like laughing now.
Lee felt the Raptor rise on the elevator and then the tow engage that pulled it onto the hangar deck. It stopped with a small jolt. The door rose. He and Kendra descended the ramp.
"Thanks, guys," Kendra called back to Maggie and Skulls. If either one of them answered, Lee didn't hear it. Skulls never even turned around. "What was that all about?" Kendra asked Lee. "Why are they treating us like we have the plague or something?"
"It's not you. It's me. You're just guilty by association. I'll explain later."
"You and Maggie have some kind of history?"
"Nothing like that. She and my brother have a thing. At least I guess they still do."
"You must not talk to him much."
"I talk to him every week. We just don't talk about the same stuff you girls talk about."
Lee felt his temper start to rise. He wasn't sure why he felt the need to explain anything to Kendra. His and Zak's relationship was none of her business.
"Oh, so now I'm one of the girls? Does that make you one of the boys?"
Lee had to stifle his reply as a young man walked over to meet them. "Welcome aboard, sirs. I'm Galen Tyrol, Crew Chief. Commander Cain wants you to go straight her quarters. She's waiting for you. Do you need someone to take you?"
"I know the way," Lee said, struggling to keep the irritation out of his voice. "I was on another battlestar for a year."
Tyrol looked at Lee. "Some of the crew served under your father when he was the CO of this ship. They have a lot of respect for him. I just wanted you to know that, sir."
Lee barely nodded. Everybody the admiral had ever dealt with seemed to have a lot of respect for him. Lee wondered how many of them really knew the man who preferred having the crew of a battlestar for a family instead of his wife and two sons.
"Thank you for your help, Chief," Kendra said politely.
Lee started off at a fast walk. Kendra caught up with him. "That was pretty damned rude," she hissed. "The man was going out of his way to be nice to you and you brushed him off. No wonder people treat you the way they do."
"He wasn't going out of his way to be nice to me. He was telling me what a great man he thinks my father is. You have no idea how sick I get of hearing…"
"So everything I heard about you and dear old Dad is true."
"I'm not going to talk to you about my father and me. And don't go pulling that spook stuff on me, either. It's no big secret that my father and I haven't always gotten along. You don't need to read some secret dossier on me or him to come to that conclusion."
"Don't bite my head off just because you've obviously got a great big chip on your shoulder where your dad is concerned and…"
"Drop it, Kendra," Lee said angrily. "It's none of your damned business. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you and your mother. I'm sure yours is not the mother-daughter love story of the century, either."
Kendra didn't say anything for a few moments and then she started laughing. "This thing with Commander Cain has got both of us ready to climb the walls. I can see the headline in the Stars and Bars newspaper now. Diplomatic military attachés cooling heels in Galactica's brig after slugging it out in the corridor over who had the worst parent."
The tension dissipated and Lee laughed as well.
Lee found Commander Cain's quarters without a problem. The Marine guard outside the door let them in.
Commander Cain was standing at a long table behind her nearly empty desk. Felix Gaeta was with her.
As they entered the commander's quarters, Lee quickly glanced around. Everything that had belonged to his father was gone, the desk and chairs and rugs, even the artwork. It was all now a part of Bill's office back on Caprica. Cain's quarters were spare by comparison. Lee didn't see a single chair. A nice treadmill took up space where his father had a small couch and several chairs. There was nothing on the walls. The only picture he saw was a small one on her desk of two girls, a young teenager and a child of three or four. He guessed that the picture was of Helena Cain and her sister Lucy.
Lee and Kendra came to attention.
Cain barely glanced around. "At ease," she said before continuing her discussion with Gaeta.
She finally turned. "Are introductions necessary?"
"I know Mr. Gaeta, sir. He and I attended the Academy together. How are you, Felix?"
"Fine, Lee. You?"
Lee introduced Kendra, and she and Felix shook hands.
"We have some preliminary footage from the unmanned drones. It doesn't look good," Cain said.
"Are surface missions going to be possible?" Lee asked. "That's the first question Dr. Nylund will ask."
Gaeta spoke up. "Not to Queenstown or Picon City or any of the major centers of civilization. The radiation in the atmosphere has settled in a broad band around the entire planet carried by the atmospheric winds. Anything between 60 degrees north latitude and 60 degrees south latitude would be suicide. The radiation levels are too high even with radiation hazmat suits."
"What about the north or south poles?" Kendra asked.
"We're still waiting on data from the poles." Cain said. "Mr. Gaeta, show them what one of our drones photographed in the ruins of Queenstown."
Lee and Kendra both stepped up closer to the monitor and Gaeta brought up a looping stream of photographs. The images were fuzzy and black and white, but there was no mistaking the metal frames of Cylon centurions. They didn't look like the casualties of fighting. They didn't look damaged like they would have been from bullets or explosives. They looked like they had stopped working and fallen over at various places in the street amid the skeletal remains of mounds of humans and some bulldozers and other heavy equipment.
"Go back," Lee said suddenly. Gaeta stopped and reversed the footage. Lee pointed to the seat of a bulldozer. The hardhat had fallen off the corpse who was still fairly recognizable. "That's Aaron Doral. A skinjob."
"I believe you're right," Cain commented.
Kendra leaned closer. "He was Cavil's right-hand man back on Caprica. I wonder what this copy did to get assigned to corpse cleanup."
"Who cares," Lee said. "The radiation got him, too."
"My guess," Gaeta said, "is that they were cleaning up the bodies when the radiation got too strong. The planet's gravity is still pulling it down from the atmosphere. It ruined the centurions' processors or brains or whatever makes them tick. The skinjobs probably died before that. Neurologically they've got silica pathways, but they're still vulnerable to strong radiation. Even with all the shielding on our drones, the radiation is affecting them and their cameras. That's why we're not getting clearer pictures."
"I don't see how it could get any worse," Cain commented coldly. "Picon will be a sterile wasteland for hundreds of thousands of years."
"Then there's nobody left alive. How could there be any humans down there when the centurions couldn't even survive?" Lee said.
Gaeta switched to another set of images. "This is part of the nuclear basestar. It was too big to burn up completely in the atmosphere and came down about fifty miles north of Picon City. Everything for miles around it is spiking such high radiation readings that they're almost off the Geiger scale. So far the drones haven't picked up any other large debris from the battle, but since a great deal of the planet's surface is ocean, that's not too surprising."
"I'd like to take some of these images back to the Penelope to show to Dr. Nylund," Lee said.
Cain looked at Gaeta. "Put something together for him. Also get the data on the levels of ground radiation from near the cities and anywhere else those drones are flying. I won't expose my Marines to it, but I'll leave it up to Dr. Nylund to decide if he wants to take a team down there. I can't imagine he would be that careless of the lives of his people or that any of them would be insane enough to want to go. I just told the drone team to bring them back and put them through decontamination. The radiation is so bad the leader is afraid we'll lose them."
"With your permission, then, sir, if Lieutenant Shaw and I could be given somewhere to work, we'd like to get our thoughts together on how we're going to present this to Dr. Nylund."
"Mr. Gaeta, take them to the officer's wardroom. I'll call my XO and tell him to see that you get some peace and quiet to work."
"Yes, sir," Gaeta said. He looked at Lee and Kendra. "Follow me."
Out in the corridor, Lee said, "You must like being on the G. You've been here three years now."
"Almost four."
"Do you hear anything from Shelley?" Lee asked nonchalantly.
"She's done well since she left the Academy last year. I saw her when I was on leave. She's up for promotion to captain. She started dating Troy Minos not long ago."
"That's good. I'm glad she's doing well."
Lee got a sideways glance from Kendra. He ignored it. Mentioning Shelley had probably been a mistake. Kendra would try to pick the information out of him later if she hadn't already heard about it from her source of information.
"It's really bad about Picon," Kendra said. "I was hoping…"
"I know," Lee cut her off as he thought of Kara's mother and Karl's parents and little sister. "We all were."
"Gods damned Cylons," Gaeta said. "They can't put those skinjob bastards in front of a firing squad soon enough to suit me."
Lee got another sideways glance from Kendra. He was sure Gaeta spoke for most of those in the fleet. He started to say something and changed his mind. Picon had been the home of nearly sixty-five million humans. The Colonial Fleet's headquarters had been there. In the face of such massive destruction, Lee knew he could say nothing that would make any of them feel better. He and Kendra would get the photographs and radiation readings and take the information back to Dr. Nylund. He would forget about telling Felix Gaeta that all of the Cylons weren't bent on the total destruction of humanity. The fact that several of the copies had betrayed their own race to help the humans was not common knowledge. For right now Lee would keep his thoughts to himself and concentrate on doing the job his father had sent him on this mission to do.
…
Laura had finished breakfast and was watching her son play with his toys when one of her security guards brought her Elosha's reply.
I would be honored to join you for lunch today.
Laura told her guard to have a car at the little temple at 12:30, the time she had put in her letter. She called down to the kitchen and told the chef on duty that she would have a guest for lunch that day.
Maya walked into the room. She had the day off and was casually dressed in jeans and a dark pink sweater. She had a jacket over her arm.
"Sam and I are going to take a picnic lunch and drive up to North Lake Park. He just bought a new car…his third one."
Laura smiled. "A sporty little red one?"
Maya smiled also. "This one is silver. The last one was red."
"Have a good time."
"Thanks."
As Laura sat down on the floor with her son, she thought about the one and only time she had been to North Lake Park. Bill had taken her. He was a young Viper pilot and was leaving the next day to go to a battlestar and fight the Cylons. She was eighteen years old and in love for the first time in her life. They had taken a picnic lunch and a bottle of wine and a blanket. Bill had rented a small sailboat and they had sailed over to the island in the middle of the lake. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the shoreline as they had walked hand-in-hand away from where they had docked the boat. She could see the secluded little clearing near the water where Bill had spread the blanket. Laura opened her eyes and looked at her son. The moment of nostalgia passed.
Bill was her past. They had missed their chance all those years ago and again five years ago when they had been on the negotiating team together. The first time his pride had kept them apart. The second time he had chosen to reconcile with his wife and attempt to be a father to his sons. As long as there was a chance that John was alive, there would not be a third chance for them because John and their child were her present and her future. She said another prayer for his safety as she watched Braedon dump a wooden puzzle on the floor. It was one of his favorites, the nursery rhyme of a cow jumping over a moon. She crawled over to him and used a tissue to wipe his nose before she picked up one of the puzzle pieces.
"Tell mamma what this is?" She asked as she held it up to him.
"Moon," he answered.
"That's right. What's up in the sky with the moon?"
"Starz. Kawa."
"Kara's up in the sky with the stars?"
Braedon took the puzzle piece from Laura. He squatted and put the moon into the puzzle. "Bwing Dada home."
…
In the early days of John's imprisonment, before the drugs and the brutality had begun taking their toll on him, he had often awakened aroused and dreaming of his wife, of Laura's gentle touch, of the way she would snuggle against him. He would wrap his arms around her and smell the sweet scent of her skin and think he was the luckiest man alive to be married to someone as beautiful and smart and caring as Laura Roslin. Whether or not she would have married him had they not made Braedon was one of the questions he used to torment himself when he was in a mood to doubt his good fortune. The other one was whether she would have stayed with him after Carolanne Adama's death if it were not for their son. He didn't ask himself those questions any longer. It didn't matter. There was almost no chance he would ever make it back to Caprica. There was a much greater chance that Bill Adama's battlestars would show up in the sky one day and nuke Nereid into oblivion and him along with it. Sonja's words had been discouraging. Escape from the city now seemed all but impossible.
John had not wanted to leave an unconscious D'Anna on the couch the night before and so had carried her to the bedroom. He had put her on the bed and had taken off only her shoes and jacket. As usual, he had removed everything but his boxer shorts. He had lain awake for a long time listening to her breathe, but his eyes had finally grown heavy and he had drifted into an uneasy sleep that deepened as his conscious mind gradually let go of his fear that D'Anna's brain was hung in the programming loop from hell, a Cylon Sleeping Beauty who would never awaken.
Eventually he slipped into the realm of disjointed dreams where he had begun to go in his sleep lately. He was at the prison and Simon was plunging a needle into his vein, and then he was on the Solaria talking to Nic Singer, an ace Viper pilot and his best friend, and then he was on his motorcycle skimming over a back road on Picon, the dark around him and the sky full of stars, the headlight cutting the night, the wind whistling past him, accelerating into that nearly fatal curve and then he was on the beach with Laura, the same sky full of stars, his arms around her, making love to her, whispering her name, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that he loved her and always would.
Laura's hands were on him in a gentle caress. He welcomed her touch. He'd waited so long for it, so long to have her back in his arms again and yet something didn't seem right. The dream was too real. Slowly he opened his eyes. The light outside the windows was the palest gray. It was well before dawn. His mind registered where he was at the same time it also registered another soft touch that was not a dream. D'Anna was awake and her hand was gently caressing him, feeling the result of his dream.
He carefully reached for her and realized that she had taken off the rest of her clothes. He spoke softly so as not to startle her. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." She took his hand. "Show me what to do."
There was never any question of what was going to happen with them. He had promised her. The gods had given him a second chance to do this right and he was more than ready.
Sonja had been right. D'Anna may never have been with a man before, but she wasn't naive. She had a basic knowledge of the ways the act could be accomplished. He understood what she wanted to do.
He helped her, his hands grasping and moving her hips until she cried out, her fingers tightening convulsively on his shoulders. The moment, so long delayed for him, was as good as he had known it would be.
He pulled her down against him and held her, not letting her leave him right away, the good feeling lingering. She finally slid down beside him but he still kept his arm around her and settled her against him, her head on his shoulder. He had to hold her. He always had to hold Laura. This was the best part afterward, holding his wife against him, her head on his shoulder, her soft hair falling over his arm and chest. He felt himself sliding into the dream again and let sleep claim him as he thought of his wife and how much he loved her.
Please forgive me. He wasn't even sure by then whose forgiveness he was asking, Laura's or D'Anna's because he'd wronged them both. He'd made adulterous love to D'Anna while thinking of his wife. He wondered briefly how the gods would call him to atone for what he had done. He hoped they understood why he had done it. His last thought before he submerged into sleep was to wonder if his atonement would be to stand before Laura one day and tell her what he had done. Would his punishment be her rejection or her forgiveness? Either one would become his burden to bear.
…
Laura and Elosha were to eat lunch on a small terrace adjoining the inner courtyard of Marble House. She didn't think Richard Adar and his family had ever used the terrace because when she had first seen it, the potted shrubs and flowers were overgrown and the beautiful little fountain of Posiden with his dolphins was not functioning. Laura had quickly changed that. She loved the terrace back at the apartment she and John had shared. They had often eaten meals out there in nice weather. Once they had even made love there on a very dark night.
She had asked the garden staff of Marble House to clean up the little terrace and get the fountain repaired. The job had taken them nearly a week, but the transformation was worth it. The stone floor was scrubbed and the dead leaves and other debris of winter were removed. Several of the large pots now overflowed with early spring flowers, tulips and daffodils and hyacinths. The white marble fountain was spotless. From the outer rim the raised snouts of Posiden's dolphins spouted sparkling streams of water into the basin while the god himself stood in the center, his trident raised. Beautiful young women sat around his feet, their toes skimming the water, the hems of their marble gowns translucent in the sunlight. Laura knew they were the nereids or sea nymphs who always accompanied the sea god. She knew how fitting it was that John's code name in the resistance had been Posiden. He had told her that he had chosen it to honor his father who earned his living from the sea. Laura had teasingly told him that he had chosen it because Posiden was always surrounded by beautiful women and she knew that John's life had been filled with beautiful women. But she also now believed that from the moment he had first kissed her that he had never seriously looked at another woman. On the night she had last seen him, Laura had never been more certain of her husband's love for her.
Her chef and his staff had set a little table in a protected corner of the terrace under a jasmine-covered pergola. She had left Braedon with one of the women on her staff who filled in on Maya's days off. Laura was waiting inside the door to the portico when the car bringing Elosha pulled up. The two women greeted each other warmly. Laura believed that her friendship with Elosha had been a gift from the gods. For the last several years she had turned to Elosha for advice and comfort at every crisis in her life and Elosha's calm understanding and wisdom had never failed her.
"I am pleased to see you looking well," Elosha said.
"Thank you. I'm so glad you could join me today."
Elosha smiled. "An invitation from the President is hard to refuse. How is your son?"
"He has a runny nose right now, but other than that he's fine. He's with one of my staff. I told her to bring him down for a short visit when she finished feeding him."
They reached the terrace. "This is beautiful. A quiet and serene place."
"Now that the weather is getting warmer, I come here to relax. The sound of the water is soothing to me."
"You like the sea god, then. It's a beautiful fountain."
Laura smiled. "Posiden is my favorite."
"How is Kara? I hoped I might see her today as well."
"She's on a mission?"
"Still? Lee stopped by to see me last Tuesday. He told me she had undertaken a dangerous mission. He asked me to pray for her."
"She's still gone. Lee is on a mission now as well. He's aboard the Penelope. It's a research ship visiting the other Colonies. I'm sure you've heard of their mission."
"All of Caprica has heard of their mission. The ship bears one of my favorite names. Penelope was the good and faithful wife of an ancient king. She raised their son and kept the kingdom running while she waited patiently for her husband Odysseus to return although many had given him up for dead. She also turned away many suitors."
Laura nodded, trying not to draw any parallels to her own life, and yet without Elosha even being aware, her words had again comforted Laura. Penelope's husband Odysseus had indeed returned to his wife after most of his countrymen had given him up for dead.
Her chef pushed a small cart out with tea and their salads. "The first course," he said with a flourish.
"Thank you," Laura told him. He seemed to want to hover so she smiled. "We need a bit of privacy." When he had retreated through the glass-paned door and closed it behind him, she said, "You understand I'm speaking to you now in the strictest confidence."
"Then you are speaking to me as your priest?"
"Yes. Did Kara ever talk to you about the possibility that John might be alive?"
Elosha's eyes widened in surprise. "No. After I performed the marriage ceremony for her friend and the young Cylon woman, Kara asked me to pray for her father. That's all. How could it be possible?"
"Yolanda Brenn saw something. On her deathbed she told Kara whatever it was she had seen. I need to find Keshia, Yolanda's companion. She's the only other one who heard everything Yolanda said to Kara that night. I need to know exactly what was said."
"Keshia may not remember. That night was very difficult for her. She loved Yolanda very much."
"Kara told me," Laura said gently. "Do you know where Keshia is now?"
"She works downtown at a shelter for homeless women and children. It's run by the Delphi Sisters of Hera. My own little temple gives them a portion of our donations. They do good work and struggle to get by. Keshia has a room there. All she asks for the work she does is shelter and meals."
Laura thought briefly of the huge amount of cubits that the government was pouring into their defense systems and to ready their battlestars for the coming fight on the Cylon homeworld. She knew other programs had suffered.
"I think I need to visit the shelter very quietly and make a personal donation to them," she said to Elosha. "The gods have blessed me. It's my turn to give something back."
Elosha reached out and placed her hand on Laura's arm. "Perhaps Penelope's story is also your own."
Tears flooded Laura's eyes. "Please pray that he comes to no harm."
"I will pray for his safety and also for his return to you."
…
The second time John awakened that morning was not from a gentle caress but from D'Anna's cry of, "Let go of me."
The rising sun flooded the bedroom with light. Two centurions stood just inside the door. A naked D'Anna was struggling with Simon.
"What the hell," John said and sat up. He started to throw back the sheet. One of the centurions locked its weapon on him.
"Don't move and don't interfere," Simon ordered him. "We're not going to hurt her. The creators want her back at the lab so they can make sure she's all right."
"I'm fine," D'Anna said. "There's nothing wrong with me."
Simon had her wrists in a tight grasp. "You don't know that. You went quietly the last time. Why are you fighting now?"
"I don't want to go," she said desperately.
"Gods damn it," John said. "Let her go. I'll talk to her. There's no need to hurt her. At least give her some privacy to get dressed."
"We don't share your human modesty, but I don't want to damage her. You have five minutes."
Simon let go of D'Anna. He motioned to the centurions who backed out of the doorway. John got out of bed and pulled on his shorts. D'Anna sat down on the other side of the bed and began to cry. He walked around the bed, sat down beside her and put his arm around her.
"I don't want to go with them," she sobbed.
"Have your creators ever hurt you?"
"No."
"What do they do?"
"Ask me questions. I don't even see them. I stand in a room and put my hands in the datastream. I hear their voices inside my head."
"What's the datastream?"
"The way they communicate changes in our programming with us."
"You need to get dressed and go with Simon. I don't want him or the centurions to hurt you. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be waiting right here for you to get back."
She gnawed her thumbnail again.
"Come on, D'Anna." He picked up her clothes from the floor. "Get dressed. If you don't do it, you know Simon will…or he'll have the centurions haul you out of here naked. You don't want him to do that."
She took the clothes. John stood up and she began dressing.
"Was everything all right this morning? Did you enjoy it?" She asked.
"Everything was fine this morning, and I enjoyed it very much. I hope you did, too."
She kept her eyes down. "I didn't know it would feel that good. Can we do it again when I get back?"
He walked over to her and pushed her hair from her face. Again the feeling of pity washed over him. "We'll do it again when you get back." She put her arms around him and he held her.
Simon came to the door. "Let's go."
Without looking back, D'Anna went with him. The apartment door opened and they were gone. John took a shower and put on sweatpants and a t-shirt. He went into the kitchen and made coffee. When it was ready, he took his cup out to the balcony to wait for his breakfast to be brought. Clouds had moved across the sky and covered the sun. Birds flew in and out of the broken windows in the long-abandoned building across the street. The wind brought the smell of rain and the distant rumble of thunder. It reminded him of the ocean. The first drops hit the edge of the balcony and splashed his feet. He closed his eyes and thought of the island, of waves breaking endlessly on the shore, of a blanket under the stars and of being in the arms of the woman he loved.
…
Kara opened her eyes to dim light. For a few moments she thought she was on the Galactica because she was in a bunk and then she remembered where she was. She was on one side of the little sleeping room at Emmalyn's dwelling in base camp. The two bunks across from hers were empty, the covers pulled neatly over them. She heard voices and laughter coming from the next room. She smelled baking bread. The room wasn't cold but it wasn't warm either. She got up and quickly pulled on her jeans and sweatshirt. She fixed the covers on her own bunk as neatly as theirs. She found her brush in her pack and brushed her hair. She was then unable to find the elastic for her ponytail. She finally gave up and went into the bigger room with her hair down around her shoulders. Four sets of male eyes turned in her direction.
"Hey, Kara," Narcho said.
"Good morning," she replied and realized that she felt self-conscious as Hunter and his two uncles appraised her.
Emmalyn was standing at the stove with her back to the room. "So you're finally awake."
"Don't start on her," Hunter said to his aunt.
"Do you cook, girl?" Emmalyn asked.
Before she could speak, Hunter said, "Her name is Kara."
"Do you cook, Kara?"
"Yes, I do," she answered and heard an edge of defiance in her voice. "I've even cooked on a wood stove before."
"Have you now? And where on Caprica would you need to use a wood stove to cook?"
"When you live in the woods without any electricity," Kara answered and saw Narcho stifle a laugh.
In the course of consuming more than a few beers one night on the Galactica, she and Karl had told Narcho and Flat Top some of the things that had happened to them while they had lived in the little stone cottage, including their trial and error cooking on the wood stove. At the time it had happened, it hadn't been so funny, but as they had retold it that night around a table full of fellow pilots, the stories had gotten funnier.
Emmalyn used her apron to grasp the handle of a large frying pan and lift it off the stove. She put it on a thin, flat stone slab that sat on the wooden counter.
"I could use some help. Dish up these eggs while I get the bread out of the oven."
"You had to wait for me to get up to get some help? What's wrong with one of these guys helping you?"
Hunter stood up and looked at Kara. "I'll do it. Have a seat."
"No, I'll do it. I just want to know why four big strong guys get to sit on their rear ends and wait to be served like they were princes or something."
Targa and Beck had been watching the exchange and finally started laughing. "I think you got yourself a handful with this one," Targa said to Hunter.
Emmalyn turned to Kara. "My brothers and my nephew risk their lives every time they go outside the camp. They do it for all of us and they ask nothing in return. A lot of days they go without any food. The least I can do is feed them when they're here."
Kara thought about her words. "Fair enough." She looked at Hunter. "Sit down. I owe you. All of you. You saved my life."
Emmalyn smiled her approval and turned back to the stove. Kara walked over and began dividing the scrambled eggs onto the six plates.
Narcho got up. "They saved my life, too." He took two of the plates Kara had fixed and put them in front of Targa and Beck. He returned and got two more.
Kara glanced at him. Their shared smiles reflected the easy camaraderie that had developed between them while they were stationed on the Galactica and had continued back on Caprica. "You're a good wingman, Narch. I owe you a beer when we get home. In fact I owe you a whole case."
He was still grinning. "And who's going to let us have beer in jail?"
"What's this about jail?" Emmalyn asked as she turned the hot loaf of bread out of the pan onto a plate.
Narcho picked up the last two plates and sat down. "I should have kept my mouth shut."
"No, she deserves to know she's harboring two Colonial fugitives." Kara looked Emmalyn in the eyes. "I stole the Raider that I flew here. The government invested a lot of cubits in it. They equipped it for reconnaissance missions. I've brought it here twice before. We know this planet is the Cylon homeworld. My father is here. He's their prisoner. I've come to get him and take him home."
"And your friend. What's his story? Why is he here? Another missing father?"
"No. The Raider was being kept at a special hangar outside the city. I needed help getting it out onto the runway. The plan was for him to leave after that, but we tripped a silent alarm and almost got caught. If I'd left him behind, he would have gone to jail."
"I see. And your sweetheart. Why wasn't he the one helping you?"
"He wouldn't have helped me. He would have stopped me."
"As well he should have. A young woman has no business stealing a ship and coming to a hostile world to do something impossible. If the Cylons have got your father, you'll hardly be stealing him back from them. Your sweetheart's a smart man, I'd say."
"His father is an admiral," Hunter said.
"An admiral, is he?"
Kara said. "It was his plan that freed us from Cylon control four and a half months ago. He's more than just an admiral in the fleet. He's an advisor to the President of the Colonies."
"Who just happens to be…" Narcho started.
Kara cut him off, "A very smart woman."
She glanced around and saw the surprise on everyone's faces. She saw that Narcho also realized she wasn't ready to reveal her relationship to Laura Roslin.
Beck said, "A woman! The President of the Colonies is a woman?"
Emmalyn bristled. "And what, pray tell, is wrong with a woman leading the Colonial government?"
Targa quickly said, "Not one thing, Em, not one thing. You run base camp. We all know that."
"Hush. You'll give this girl and her friend the wrong idea. I can barely keep you two and my nephew in line, much less the whole camp."
Hunter had been watching Kara the whole time. She knew he was the only one who realized she had cut Narcho off for a reason.
"Let's eat," Hunter said. "These eggs are getting cold."
Emmalyn put the loaf of bread on the table. Beck reached for it and she slapped his hand. "You're not in the forest. You're at my table. The blessing first."
"Sorry," he mumbled. The three men bowed their heads. Kara glanced at Narcho and they did the same.
"We give our thanks for this meal to Hestia, goddess of hearth and home, and to Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and we give our thanks to all the gods who watch over the ones who protect us. Keep them safe. Amen."
Everyone dug into the food. There was a plate of cheese on the table and the men cut big slices. They ate mostly in silence. When they were through, Targa and Beck got up, thanked Emmalyn for the meal and left. Narcho tagged along with them because Beck was going to show him how to make the arrows for his small crossbow. They were going hunting later that day for rabbits.
"Maybe we can share recipes for rabbit stew," Kara said after they were gone. "Except I'm sure your recipe will be a lot better than mine."
"If you know how to make rabbit stew and cook on a wood stove, then it sounds like you've not always led an easy life," Emmalyn said.
Kara started clearing the empty plates from the table and putting them in the sink. "You might say that. I didn't use a crossbow, though. I got the rabbits with a slingshot." She glanced at Hunter and he smiled.
"I can vouch for her skill."
"Maybe you'll tell us your story tonight, then."
Emmalyn turned the taps over the sink and water came from faucets like in the tub. She handed Kara a cloth and a bar of soap. Kara pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and began scrubbing the plates.
"Where's Dessa this morning?" She asked.
"She was up and gone an hour or more ago. She ate a slice of cold bread from last night and an apple. She took her basket. She's off somewhere, probably down in a meadow gathering lemon grass and leaves from a plant we use for the tea you drank with your breakfast."
Hunter smiled. "Keeping Dessa indoors on any nice day is impossible."
"Aye, it's all I can do to get her to let me brush and braid her hair."
"She's beautiful," Kara said, "It's too bad that she's…" she stopped. "I shouldn't have said anything."
"No, go ahead and finish what you were going to say."
"I was going to say slow."
"It happened when she was born. Poor little thing had the cord wrapped around her neck. A fair shade of blue she was. I thought I'd never get her to breathe. Her mum bled out right there in front of us despite everything we did to try to stop it. I'm sure it wouldn't have happened on Caprica where you've got hospitals and doctors."
"Hunter told me your doctors had all died."
"We've got a few medical books and the old doctor's instruments and a few of us do what we can to take care of the rest, but we're none of us educated. We just do what we can with the little knowledge we've got."
Hunter said, "Emmalyn knows all about using herbs and other things to heal."
Emmalyn snorted. "For all the good it does."
"It does a lot of good," Hunter said. "You saved my life after that mountain lion got me."
"It was more our prayers and you being too stubborn to die."
Hunter grinned. "You've got your story. I've got mine."
"Don't you worry about Dessa running around alone out there?" Kara asked.
"Nobody in base camp would touch Dessa," Hunter said. "Not if they want to stay alive."
Emmalyn said, "Daniel often goes with her. He's mixed some paint colors from grinding minerals and herbs. When he found some bloodroot down along a creek bank, you'd have thought he found a vein of gold. He likes to go out to the meadows and paint."
"What does he paint on?" Kara asked in surprise.
"He knows how to make a thick paper from the stalks of a plant that grows wild in a high meadow close to the other end of the valley. That's what he spends the winters doing, pulping up those plants and mixing them with a paste he makes from another plant and then pressing them out in sheets. Beck peels the bark off a white tree for him, too."
"And brushes? What does he do for brushes?"
Hunter said, "Markham found some old ones on the Hyperion. Daniel has already said he could make more brushes from a bit of cat fur or hog bristles. Beck told him he'd carve some handles for him. That's what Beck does in the dead of winter if we're snowed in. He carves things out of wood."
Kara smiled at Hunter. "You're a talented family."
He grinned. "Not me. I can't even carry a tune. You should hear Daniel sing. One of the old men here in base camp said he has perfect pitch."
"So which Colony did he come from?" Kara asked casually.
Emmalyn said, "He doesn't remember anything that happened to him before some of our men found him washed up on the bank of the river below the dam. I've never seen anyone closer to death who recovered. We think he must have escaped from the city after the Cylons started bringing some of the humans there."
"He doesn't even remember how he got in the river?"
"Why so curious about Daniel, girl?"
"No reason. I just think it's odd he doesn't remember anything. I had a roommate at the Academy and she'd had a…a traumatic experience…when she was younger and gradually she started remembering it.
"Well maybe Daniel will start remembering one day. We don't talk about it because it causes him pain to think of it. Personally I think there was someone with him, possibly family, and the centurions killed them. I think that's what is too painful for him to remember."
Hunter said, "After Daniel was brought to the camp, Targa and Beck took a couple of men and went upriver searching the banks. They found a place near the bottom of the dam where the ground was disturbed like there had been a scuffle. They found a lot of dried blood and several sets of human footprints."
"Aye, and half a dozen centurion footprints."
Hunter nodded. "It's just a theory, but we think Daniel and another Colonial escaped and made it as far as the base of the dam when the centurions caught up with them. Targa said from the size of the other human footprints, it was either a woman or a young person. Maybe it was Daniel's wife. The centurions shot both of them and they either went into the river on their own or were thrown into the river. They must have thought Daniel was dead."
"You never found another body, though?"
Emmalyn said, "The water at the base of the dam is deep enough to hide a thousand bodies."
"So I guess we'll never know," Hunter said.
"Unless Daniel remembers," Kara said. "Why do you think he was at the dam?"
"He followed the river out of the city," Emmalyn said.
"Or the tunnel," Hunter added.
"There's a tunnel?" Kara asked.
"He didn't come through any tunnel. How could he even have known about the tunnel?" Emmalyn asked defensively.
"What tunnel?" Kara asked again.
Hunter said. "There's a maintenance tunnel from inside the generator plant at the base of the dam. It carries the electrical lines into the city."
Emmalyn said, "The only ones who use the tunnel are Cylons. Daniel didn't come through that tunnel. He wouldn't have known about it."
"Wow, that's interesting," Kara said.
Her thought that Daniel might be a Cylon was too strong to ignore, but she decided to keep her mouth shut for now. He didn't appear to be a threat to the humans in base camp. And he didn't appear to be recovering his memory the way Boomer had. Of course Boomer didn't have a bad head injury either. She had died on Troy when she had destroyed the mining colony's dome and then she had downloaded. And when Kara had first started talking to Leoben, he hadn't remembered Cavil ordering a centurion to shoot him on the basestar either. Not until Kara had started questioning him and prodding him to try to remember. She decided that the first opportunity she had to talk to Daniel alone, she would ask him a few questions and see how far she got.
"So what are we going to do about finding my father?" She asked Hunter.
"We're not going to do anything today. I thought we'd take some bread and cheese and some mead and walk through the valley. I'd like to show you base camp."
Emmalyn raised her eyebrow at Hunter. "Make sure you take her friend with you. I'm sure he'd like to see the valley. And take Dessa, too. She'll be heartbroken if she finds out you've left her behind."
"I'll go get my canteen," Kara said.
Emmalyn followed her into the small sleeping room. "The wind will make a mess of your hair if it's down like that. I'll be glad to braid it for you."
Kara followed her back into the large room. Emmalyn sat in one of the chairs by the fireplace and Kara sat on a low wooden stool in front of her. Emmalyn expertly brushed Kara's hair back and began braiding. It took almost no time before she tied a piece of ribbon tightly around the end of the braid. Kara thanked her.
"Don't go rolling around in the grass now or you'll lose the ribbon."
Hunter had been putting bread and cheese and few apples into a small basket. He rolled his eyes upward but didn't say anything.
Kara smiled. "I'll try to control myself."
When they got outside the dwelling, Hunter said, "I know you probably don't believe it, but she likes you. She'd never have offered to braid your hair if she didn't."
Kara snickered. "I thought it was so she could tell if I'd been rolling around in the grass with…anybody."
Hunter smiled. "Okay. That, too."
They strolled down the stone path that widened into a grassy lane. Occasionally Kara saw women outside of the dwellings. Several were hanging laundry on lines strung between two poles. Kara saw a wide cloth sling tied around one woman that she was sure contained an infant. Another older woman was sitting in a straight wooden chair in front of the doorway. She was knitting. Another was kneeling between the rows of a small garden. It looked like she was pulling weeds.
"Where are the men?" Kara asked.
Most of the ones who aren't working the fields are doing their turn standing guard or patrolling in the forest. A few are shearing sheep. Some are out hunting. It's safer on the far end of the valley. The Cylons hardly ever go all the way around there because their communications with the city don't work as well from that distance."
"How far to the other end?"
"Almost twenty miles."
"How far are we going to walk?"
"Three, maybe four miles. We're going to the apple orchard. It's a good place to eat lunch. The apple trees are blooming right now. It's a good place to see the whole valley."
Hunter greeted everyone but they didn't stop walking. Kara was aware of the stares she was getting.
He said, "It's what you're wearing. They've never seen anything like it before."
"I thought it was because I'm with you."
He shrugged. "We'll have a gathering in a few days and introduce you and Narcho to everyone. They've already heard all about you, but they'll consider it an insult if we don't. Other than Daniel, most of the people who live here have never seen a human from the outside world, much less talked to one. They'll have a lot of questions for you. You and Narcho might want to get together and decide how much you want to tell them."
"I thought we'd be looking for my father in a few days."
"Tomorrow or the next day we should have some news from the city. It takes almost a week to pass it along the communication line which is person to person. This is not the place to be if you're going to be impatient."
"I just feel like I need to be doing something to find him."
"Hang on for a few days. Targa and Beck and I were out there for almost three weeks. It's good to get back into base camp and relax. Emmalyn needs to fatten us up before we go back out again."
"I'm being selfish. I'm sorry."
"What did you stop Narcho from saying about the President of the Colonies this morning?"
"You've got to promise me you'll keep it to yourself."
He stopped walking, took her arm and turned her to him. His blue eyes locked on hers. "You should know by now you can trust me."
"The President of the Colonies is married to my father. She's my stepmother. I think things would go really hard on my dad if the Cylons found out."
She saw the surprise in Hunter's eyes as he assimilated what she had just said. He let go of her arm and they resumed walking. "Anything else you held back?"
Kara nodded. "Lee's dad wants to bring his battlestars here and nuke this planet because it's the Cylon homeworld. He thinks if he doesn't, then they'll come back one day with dozens of basestars and destroy Caprica."
The shock in Hunter's voice was clear. "He would kill all the humans on our planet just to get the Cylons?"
"That's just it," Kara said. "He doesn't believe there are any humans on the planet. On my recon missions I tried to find proof, but I couldn't find any. Obviously I didn't fly over the right places because you tell me there are a lot of humans here."
"Besides us, there's eight settlements. I don't know exactly how many humans are in each one, but at least a couple of thousand. There's humans in the city, too. Not as many. Maybe a couple of hundred. They're mostly breeders or they work for the skinjobs."
"Do you know where the settlements are?"
Hunter nodded. "Most of them. So any day now we can look for those battlestars to show up and…"
"No, the admiral isn't ready. He's still months away from being ready, and even if he was ready, as long as I'm here I don't think my stepmother would let him do it."
"You don't think?"
"She wouldn't let him."
"She wouldn't let him kill you, but she would let him kill her husband? That doesn't seem right."
"They all think my dad died when he destroyed a basestar over Caprica. I've got to tell you the whole thing or none of this will make sense."
As they walked around the edge of a big field where men and woman were plowing and planting, Kara quickly told Hunter everything that had happened starting with the night they had won their freedom. He didn't interrupt her or ask any questions. He just listened to her talk. She finished by telling him about stealing the Raider.
"So you're here to find your father because you put that much faith in the words of an Oracle?"
"And because a brilliant man told me it was possible. And because I believed you were here…the free humans and the prisoners from five years ago. I think what Admiral Adama is planning is wrong. I couldn't stand by and do nothing."
"You risked your life to find your father and to keep the admiral from bombing us?"
"Go ahead and tell me I'm crazy. Tell me I've frakked up my career and my life. Tell me I'm going to prison for what I've done. Lee would say it to me. He wouldn't hesitate. He doesn't believe in Oracles. He doesn't even believe in the gods."
Hunter stopped again. In the distance they could see Dessa talking to two girls who were watching a herd of goats. Hunter whistled and she waved and started toward them.
He finally said, "The Oracle I told you about. The crazy one who said a child would be the peacemaker between us and the Cylons. She's dead now. She has been for fifteen years or more. When I was still a kid, maybe eight or nine, Emmalyn sent me to take her some herbs or something. She was an old woman by then with white hair like spider webs. Her eyes were black like a crow's and…I don't know any other way to say it…she scared the hell out of me. Targa told me I was acting like a silly little girl and to get over it, so I took the stuff to her. She grabbed my wrist with her bony fingers and I almost wet my pants. But she wouldn't let go. She told me that one day I would be a leader and help save my people. Real prophetic, right? My father was a leader. Then she told me the thing I've never been able to forget. I've been thinking about it ever since I saw your eyes two days ago. She told me that one day I would save the life of Posiden's green-eyed daughter and that she would take me to another world to tell our story. Well, you've got the green eyes and I probably saved your life. But you said your father's name was John Gallagher, not Posiden."
Kara took several deep breaths, her thoughts racing almost too fast for her to grasp. "When he was in the resistance on Caprica, my father's code name was Posiden. The Oracle that I knew was blind. The first time I went to see her she called me Posiden's green-eyed daughter."
Hunter's eyes met hers. In the space of a heartbeat and without saying another word, they had both acknowledged the importance of the parts they had already played and would soon play in the future of two different worlds and in saving many thousands of lives on a beautiful, green planet that orbited a distant star.
TBC…
