CHAPTER EIGHT
Fight or Flight
Kadena Air Base
Okinawa, Japan
For a moment, all Laura Roslin could see was a gray haze, and indistinct shapes moving back and forth. A dull pain resonated in her shoulder. She'd heard gunfire – had she been shot? As both her mind and vision cleared, she began to piece together what had just happened. The gray haze wasn't a figment of her imagination: several of the Marines tossed smoke bombs as she went down, providing them with cover and confusion so that they might make their escape. Roslin touched her sore shoulder, and her fingers found blood. However, when she lifted her head to get a better look at the situation, she saw no wound, and realized it was not her blood.
Tom Zarek was laying beside her, his face contorted and his hand over his shoulder. Blood was pouring out of the wound, oozing through his fingertips and staining everything in their path. His breathing came in short, sudden bursts: he was going into shock. At least he was breathing, so there was hope.
"Tom!" she cried. Her ears were ringing; gunfire was being exchanged from both sides, and people were shouting orders. She called her vice-president's name again and shook him by his non-injured shoulder. "Tom, can you hear me?"
"I can hear you," he said through clenched teeth. "Did they get you? Are you hurt?" He seized up, but then managed to fight back the crippling pain. "Frak!"
"No, no, I'm fine, thanks to you." She'd concluded her own shoulder was hurting because that was how she fell.
Roslin didn't know what else to do or say; in all the chaos, she couldn't even tell who was friend or foe. Someone was coming their way, a woman, with dark hair tied in a ponytail that was coming loose and wearing a uniform with a Colonial insignia: Racetrack. "Time to go, Madam President!" she said, pulling Roslin to her feet.
"What about Zarek?" Roslin asked frantically. Looking back, she saw that two more of their Marines helping the vice-president up. She broke free of Racetrack's grip, then inserted herself between Zarek and one of the Marines. "You two, give us covering fire!" she ordered. "We can take care of him!"
They half-ran, half-stumbled back over to the ship, with Zarek turning into more and more dead weight with each step. On the edge of sheer panic, though, was how Roslin found her strength. Even with all the war she'd had seen in the last few years, there were only a handful of times she was directly in the line of fire, and she'd never taken an enemy bullet in her flesh. Laura Roslin was a fighter – that, anyone could attest to – but she was no soldier.
Lee Adama took over for the second Marine when they reached the Celestial Mariner's boarding ramp. "Where were you hit?" he asked, noticing all the blood covering both. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, but Zarek's been shot," Roslin answered. "He's lost a lot of blood. We have to get back to the fleet!"
Meanwhile, Kara Thrace was also moving closer to the ramp, firing into the smoke as she inched toward the others. "Frak!" she shouted. "They've captured someone! I can't tell who, but we'd better get the frak out of here before they get us all!"
Roslin's heart sank. Oh, no... And to think she thought it was all going so well!
William Adama burst onto the scene next, bleeding from a cut over his eye. "We can't get to the Vipers!" he said. "We'll have to leave them!" As soon as the situation turned for the worst, the admiral knew this wasn't a battle they could win here. With fight ruled out, their only other choice was flight.
Bullets began raining down on the ramp, and while none found human targets, they did plenty of scaring as they ricocheted off the the support beams and side of the ship. "Let's go!" yelled Kara. "Get on or get left!"
Adama took off running through the Celestial Mariner, with the cockpit as his goal. The cut on his face bled harder with every beat of his heart, and the sting was so strong he could no longer bear to keep his eye open. "We've got to get out of here!" he shouted when he reached his destination. "We've got one man down, and it'll be all of us if we don't take off now!"
The ship began rising into the air, and back in the cargo hold, Kara was pulling the last Marine onto the ramp as it closed. "Who'd we lose, Venner?" she asked.
"Racetrack, sir," Venner gasped. "They shot her, and Sykes too, when he tried to get her."
"Where's Sykes?" Kara demanded. "Is he alive?"
"Yes, sir, but he's out cold. I think they got him with some sort of tranquilizer."
Kara excused herself, then joined Lee and Roslin at Zarek's side. Roslin had taken off her sash and was using it to stop the bleeding, and while it was doing its job, blood was still seeping through. The vice-president was still conscious, but rapidly losing color. "He going to be all right?" the Viper pilot asked. She couldn't help but recall the time she tried to snipe Zarek, and now, over four years later, someone decided to come in and pick up where she left off.
"If we get him to Doc Cottle soon enough, yeah," answered Lee.
"Just hang on; we'll be there soon," Roslin told Zarek. Looking around, she frantically added, "Why haven't we jumped yet? Did they take out our FTL? How quickly can we get back to the Embrace?"
"I'm not dying, Laura," Zarek assured her in between short, shallow gasps for air. "It just hurts like hell."
"They probably want to get higher," Lee guessed. "Jumping from here into a place with no atmosphere will shake things up pretty bad for anything that isn't secured."
"Frak the science!" Kara exclaimed. "Let's just get out of here!"
It was is the captain heard her; a moment later, his voice came over the ship's intercom. "Stand by for jump in ten, and everyone hold on to something."
"Laura..." Zarek whispered as the countdown began.
Roslin found his cold hand and wrapped her own blood-soaked fingers around it. "Yes, Tom?"
"I'm sorry... for everything. This isn't exactly the end I thought we'd find."
"This isn't the end." The countdown finished, and just before they jumped, she added, "It's the beginning."
Battlestar Galactica
In orbit around Jupiter
Karl Agathon was starting to worry. It had been almost three hours since he heard from the Earth delegation, and the last news was that his wife was staying with the Fate's Embrace while the others went down to the planet on the Celestial Mariner. Sharon should at least be checking in with them. Why wasn't she? Did it have something to do with the ship?
He was pacing up and down in the CIC, stopping only to scan the nearest instrument panels for changes in their readings. The other officers had given up trying to calm him down. They were all anxious, but he was the XO, and had the most severe edge to take off. Finally, he stopped, and looked at the communications officer. "Dee, put me through to the Fate's Embrace."
"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Dualla returned. Her fingers danced across the keyboard in front of her, and then she spoke into the microphone on her headset. "Fate's Embrace, Galactica. Please respond when you receive. We wish for an update on your situation." Ending the transmission, she gave her attention to Agathon. "With the distance, it'll be about fifteen minutes before we get a response.
The young major sighed and looked around the room at the anxious faces under his command. He'd served as Galactica's XO before, but that didn't mean he had all the right qualifications to permanently assume the post after Saul Tigh's death – he was just the one who happened to have a feel for the job and the respect of the crew. More importantly, Adama had always been there. The admiral knew Agathon's circumstances resulted in a need for constant on-the-job training, and their relationship was more student-mentor than commander and executive officer. With Adama off on a dangerous mission, Helo wasn't just keeping things in order on Galactica – he was charged with the security of the entire fleet.
Suddenly, an alert sounded, and Agathon's gut gave a lurch. Sharon couldn't have responded that quickly. "Lieutenant Gaeta, report," he requested of the chief tactical officer.
"DRADIS contact," Gaeta replied, and read off the bearing. "It's the Celestial Mariner!"
Well, that was one question answered, but where was the Fate's Embrace?
"The Mariner's requested priority landing, and they need Doc Cottle," Dee chimed in. "The vice-president's been shot!"
Frak! Helo thought as cold panic gripped his heart, but didn't dare lose his composure in front of the others. "Get them aboard," he said. "Lieutenant Riley, locate Dr. Cottle, and tell them to get sick bay ready. Dee, tell the Mariner I'll meet them on the deck and stand by for response from the Embrace. Mr. Gaeta, you have the command."
A chorus of "yes, sir"s followed him as he left the CIC. Agathon tried to rationalize things as he hastily walked in the direction of the landing bay. Clearly, things had not gone how they'd hoped on Earth. If someone was injured, especially as severely as he presumed from the urgency in Dee's voice, it would make sense for the Mariner to jump right back to the fleet instead of regroup with the Embrace. Then, there was the matter of how and why Tom Zarek had been shot. Sending the Vipers was probably a bad idea; perhaps Earth saw them as a hostile gesture. What else might they have done? Furthermore, was Zarek the real target at all? If he lived, would whoever was behind the attack try to finish the job? Was anyone else in immediate danger?
There were so many questions that needed to be answered. Helo had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
By the time he reached the landing bay, the Mariner had docked, and its crew and passengers were exiting the craft. Tom Zarek was being carried away on a stretcher by medical personnel. Helo did a quick head count and came up two short: one was Sharon, but where was the other?
"Admiral!" he called, and waved to get Adama's attention. "Sir, what are your orders?"
Adama, in the process of mopping up blood from a cut over his eye, began walking toward his XO. "Meet in my quarters as soon as Athena gets aboard. We need to talk." He looked back at the others getting off the luxury liner, then continued walking and said, "I want to give Lee, Kara, and the president some time to get cleaned up before we start dealing with this."
"Yes, sir," said Agathon. When Adama didn't stop walking, he asked, "Sir, where are you going?"
"I'm not leaving the baseship unattended when it gets here," Adama called back. "We only have one other choice."
Kadena Air Base
Okinawa, Japan
If Rebecca Bagalayos were to ever make a list of the worst days in her life up until that point, this one would definitely rank near the top. As she stormed through Kadena's detention facility, personnel gave the proud, angry woman her space. She knew she was not a particularly imposing sight to the untrained eye, so throughout her career, she overcompensated with building a reputation. Bagalayos was all of five feet two inches in height, and struggled to keep her weight over a hundred and ten pounds. She was born of a Mexican mother and Filipino father, giving her a dark, exotic appearance that many would have called beautiful if her face wasn't practically frozen into the scowl she wore so often. The small, unusual-looking woman's early days in the Air Force were marked by everything from harmless teasing to attempted rape. Once she established herself as a force to be reckoned with, by a combination of determination, unexpected physical prowess, and sheer ruthlessness, there were few who dared to cross either the line or her path.
Her rise through the ranks, though not unusually quick, was consistent, and drew attention because she was a minority. She became a general four years ago, at the age of fifty-one, being neither the first nor the youngest woman of non-Caucasian descent in the United States Air Force to do so. What set her apart, and skyrocketed her into the public eye, was her controversial appointment at Kadena Air Base. Again, it was not the first time a woman was the ranking officer at a major military installation, but it was true there were not many, and none quite like Rebecca Bagalayos. Few people genuinely liked her, though fewer still could maintain that she wasn't a qualified leader. She did what she had to, without any hesitation, and while she was effective, her methods made her some enemies in high places.
Part of the reason she was stationed at Kadena in the first place was her talent for damage control, but she doubted the Joint Chiefs had anything like this in mind when they sent her here. She thought the Secretary of Defense had been joking when he warned of possible alien contact. Aliens belonged in science fiction and the minds of conspiracy theorists, not the agenda of the United States Air Force. Nevertheless, she followed the order without question, since she'd learned from her previous encounters with Sebastian Tegler that when he said jump, it was in her best interest to ask how high. When word came from the Pentagon that they had incoming, their fighters successfully escorted the bogey back to Kadena. That could have taken any direction, but it took a good one at first: not only were they communicating, they were getting through to each other. The general was sure the one called Laura Roslin and her associates meant Earth no harm, but then someone had to fire a shot and send it all to hell!
She'd gotten on the phone with Tegler immediately after the attack to update him and the Pentagon. While she was delivering the bad news, her second-in-command, Brian House, interrupted with something that only slightly improved the situation: Kadena security apprehended the sniper. They knew nothing about him, other than he freely admitted to the crime. Now, Bagalayos was on her way to glean some answers from this troublemaker, and then check on their other prisoner – the alien. If she believed in God, she would have prayed that they didn't spark some sort of intergalactic war that would wipe out humanity.
Colonel House was waiting outside the sniper's interrogation room in Kadena's brig, with an armed guard. "Tell me some good news, House," Bagalayos said as she approached.
House was a good seven inches taller than his commander, but that didn't prevent him from feeling dwarfed in the shadow of her fury. "Is that an order, ma'am?"
"Apparently not one you can carry out," the general sighed. "I'll settle for whatever you can give me before I go in there."
"I've never seen anything like this guy," House began. "He won't tell us his name. They're running his fingerprints, but it doesn't look promising. He doesn't seem remorseful or scared or anything – he's just sitting there calmly, assuring us it's going to be all right. He seems completely out of it, like he's high or been lobotomized or something, and... and his eyes..."
"What about his eyes?"
"They're red, and they kind of... glow. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was a robot."
Bagalayos rolled her eyes. "You've been watching too many Sci-Fi Channel original movies, House." First aliens, now robots. She almost wanted to know what could make this day worse, but quickly changed her mind. She'd wondered the same thing after talking to Sebastian Tegler, her third least-favorite person in the world, and now here she was with House and his attempts to rationalize the unknown with the irrational.
"You say that now," House countered. "We'll talk again after you're through with him."
Hopefully, they'd have something else to say after she was through with him. Bagalayos nodded to the guard, and he opened the door. She went inside, with House a step behind. The sniper was sitting at the table, his hands in cuffs, and gazing contentedly at a camera mounted in the corner. He had pasty skin and looked unkempt; his short blonde hair haphazardly stuck out in spots, and his jaw was coated with stubble. The general nearly faltered when she saw his eyes – they were a sickly, bloodshot shade of red tinged with yellow and green, and did seem to glow a bit. It had to be the light, she reasoned. She'd never heard of light playing such tricks before, but it made more sense than the alternative.
Bagalayos stopped in front of the table and glared down at their prisoner. "Look at me," she ordered.
The man's head rolled around, and stopped when his eyes made contact with hers. His lips parted into a twisted smile; the left hemisphere of his face appeared completely limp, as if he'd suffered a stroke that immobilized that side. "General Rebecca Bagalayos," he said. His speech was slurred, and a trail of drool glistened at the paralyzed corner of his mouth. "God told me we would meet one day."
"Who are you? Why did you attack the strangers?"
"It's all right," he assured her. "You're safe now. They won't find it."
"Find what?" Bagalayos asked. She placed her hands on the table and leaned forward. "What do you know about them that we don't?" Was it possible he really was protecting them, and not just making trouble?
He gazed at her as intently as he could with his lazy, glowing eyes, and responded, "They would have destroyed it. It will be safe now."
"Destroy what?" Bagalayos asked. "What do you mean?"
"They can't find it," the man said. His head rolled around until it was resting on his right shoulder, and he stared at the ceiling. "They won't find it. They'll leave, and it will be safe."
Bagalayos sighed and stepped away from the table. "See?" House whispered to her. "He's like a robot. He just keeps blabbering on and insisting we're safe now."
The general narrowed her eyes, then lunged forward, seized the underside of the table, and flipped it over. "Tell us what you're talking about!" she shouted. "Who are you? How did you get onto our base? Why did you attack the strangers?"
He barely even blinked at her display of violence. "Don't be afraid. If they make another attempt, we'll stop them." They stared each other down for a moment, and then he whispered, "I must speak to you alone."
Rebecca Bagalayos was not a woman known for her patience, and her temper's short fuse had just run out. She turned around and faced her second. "House," she said quietly, "leave us."
House looked confused. "General..."
She reached under the collar of her uniform and pulled out a necklace she was wearing: a silver chain on which hung a ring. "Find Captain Kovolsky," she instructed as she unfastened the necklace. The ring slid off the chain into the palm of her hand. The center stone was a large, marquis-cut diamond on a rhodium band. "He is the one who apprehended the other prisoner, right?"
"I... I don't know if it was him exactly, but he was there, yes," House answered.
Before slipping the ring onto her finger, Bagalayos looked at it just long enough to take in the words inscribed on the underside of the band: One day, one lifetime. "Get him," she instructed, "and have him meet me at the other captive's holding cell."
"Yes, ma'am," the colonel conceded, and left the room.
Bagalayos looked behind her to make sure the door was closed, and then into the corner to see if the camera was still running. She wanted a recording of whatever this man was going to say to her, and it was certainly within her right to extract that information by any means necessary. As she approached him, he continued to sit calmly in the chair, fixing her with his otherworldly gaze. She stopped directly in front of him, and without saying anything, raised her arm and backhanded him across the face with so much force it knocked him out of the chair and onto the cold metal floor.
The corners of her mouth twitched up into the slightest of smirks as she admired the long, deep red cut her ring had left across the man's face. Blood was already trickling out of the wound. House was letting his imagination get the better of him. Whatever this man was, he wasn't a robot. Robots didn't bleed.
"I'm going to make this very simple," said Bagalayos. "Drop the clairvoyant bullshit, and you get to keep your face. Understand?"
He hadn't moved at all since he hit the floor, save an occasional blink. Bagalayos didn't wait for a response, and jumped directly into her interrogation. "Why did you attack the aliens?"
"Each of us plays a role, each time a different role," was his whispered reply. "All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again."
"Sorry, not on the list of good answers." She bent down, grabbed his shirt collar, and lifted his torso off the floor in order to have better leverage for another backhand strike across his face. "Why did you attack them?"
He coughed, and blood ran out of his mouth as he spoke. "To save the human race from its end."
Bagalayos spent a moment pondering his words before continuing the interrogation. That was the most sense he'd made since she began her questioning. It was possible that some – no, make that many – could see the arrival of aliens as signaling the end of the world. The rioting in the Philippines and Japan's northern islands certainly proved that. However, that left other things unexplained, like what he was doing on their base in the first place. He clearly wasn't Japanese, and if he was involved in the American military in any way, he would have been identified by now. The attack was obviously intentional, and the targets clear. Few people knew about the standing orders to escort any more sighted alien ships to Kadena Air Base, and Bagalayos could name all of them. It could not be a coincidence: someone in the Powers administration wanted these people dead.
"Someone knew they'd be coming here," the general said. "Who was it? Who sent you?"
"The one who would use me to halt the harbinger of death."
She grabbed him by the throat and hissed, "I want a name!"
"Kara Thrace," he choked. "Kara Thrace..."
She loosened her grip, and he continued once he was able to breathe. "Kara Thrace is the harbinger of death. She will lead the human race to its end."
And who was this Kara Thrace? The name of the alien she'd spoken to was Laura Roslin, and that was who it seemed the sniper's shot was meant for. Perhaps Kara Thrace wasn't among them, or he didn't have a clear shot, or he figured if the leader was eliminated, none of them would return to Earth again.
"Where is Kara Thrace?"
"All that matters is that she does not lead them to the Handle of Humanity."
Every answer he gave spawned two new questions, and Bagalayos was getting more and more frustrated. "Is Kara Thrace the one who sent you?"
The man started to laugh, but it turned into coughing as more blood lodged in his throat. When the fit ended, he smiled, the lines in between his teeth dark and dripping. "Sent me?" he said. "If she knew I was here, knew of my mission, she would give her life to stop me."
"Then who sent you?"
"The holy prophet," he whispered. "The messenger of God."
Bagalayos did not even bother to precede this strike with a glare of warning, bringing her foot swiftly into her prisoner's stomach. The blow forced him into a fetal position, and he coughed, expelling more blood onto the floor. "Listen to me, you overzealous piece of shit," she said. "I don't think you have any idea the severity of what you've set into motion, or what's at stake here! If they were looking for a reason to wipe out the human race, well, they have it now!"
"No, Rebecca Bagalayos." The man lifted himself up and tucked his knees underneath him so he was kneeling before her, and stared at her as best he could with his lazy eye. Blood covered the entire lower half of his face, and as he spoke, it looked as though one of his teeth had been knocked out. "You are the one who has no idea. It is not lives that are at stake, but life itself."
She was at a loss for words. Up until then, she thought there was only one man who could render her speechless. Had it been different circumstances, she would have dismissed it as nothing, but this had been a day unlike any she'd ever imagined. Aliens were real. She'd seen them with her own eyes, spoken to them, and was so close to making what she'd thought would have been a peaceful connection until this son of a bitch interfered. Somehow, he knew who they were and where to find them, but it would take some more... refined methods to get the information out of them.
Perhaps her techniques would be more effective on their other captive.
