BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT - PART 2
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing here but he idea for this episode. I'm just playing in a universe that made me happy a while back. No copyright infringement intended.
A/N: Well here it is, the first chapter of Part Two. I didn't think it would take quite this long to get ready, but life happened. I caught a virus last week and my comp was down until Saturday.
Also, as I stated in the beginning, there's another work I'm engaged in and the chapter I'm working on for that has been a real witch-with-a-B. I've written it and re-written it about six times, and now that I've gotten the part done that was giving me such a headache, a new challenge has arisen. Yay. Rather than face that challenge, I got this done. I also went back and re-read the whole thing to make sure I've gotten back in the mood. Then I saw that it needed a re-edit. That'll be up this weekend. No real changes, just some spelling corrections and some dropped words, that sort of thing, so YOU won't need to re-read it all. (Not having a beta is a bit of a pain.)
I've gotten more positive mail from BSG anys, so see? Your reviews make me work. I'm a slave to the fans.
On the subject of mail, you guys are AWESOME. I can't tell you how cool it is that you like person has asked that I not make Alternate Universe Starbuck a girl. (I wrote that I love messing with Starbuck, he's too easy.) Not an issue. I didn't have anything against Katee Sackhoff in the new series, but she didn't really trip my trigger. I might have liked her more if the worters of that show could maintain characterization from one episode to the next. Anys, Geoff; don't worry, what I have in store for Lieutanant Starbuck is a little more insideous. And no, nothing falls off.
One more thing, I backed up time just a little for continuity with the rescue team. The shuttle hasn't left yet, and for these guys, when it actually does leave is immaterial. I found I needed one more radio communication with them to A) show from their perspective that they couldn't just call Boomer when things go wrong and B) to keep them thinking that the shuttle was just a radio call away. Got to keep the prey calm, you know...
Now, done with notes. Cue the music. Let's have some monsters...
Chapter 1
Apollo looked at the small group clustered around the lantern. Everyone's faces bore expressions ranging from a vague, nauseous discomfort to wide-eyed, sweating fear. He only hoped that he looked more confidant.
"Okay, you know the plan," the captain said. "Icarion, Bardas," he nodded to two of the red clad technicians, "you two try to free Bojay's ship. If it's still flight worthy, one of us will take it out when we get back." His eye flicked to one of his two med-techs. "You, stay on the shuttle and monitor local conditions. I hope we won't need you to, but if we find Bojay and he needs emergency aid, we'll call you and you can set up the lower bay as an emergency treatment unit."
"What about leaving a warrior behind," the med-tech asked. "Four of you are enough to guard two techs and carry your pilot back at the same time."
Apollo bit back a harsh reply. 'It's the environment,' he told himself. He took a calming breath and realized that these people needed reassurance almost as much as he did.
"You're right." He jerked his chin to the biggest of the three from Red Squadron. "Wing-sergeant Tyche will stay here with you for security."
He couldn't miss the looks of relief that passed between the four. They were getting to stay near the shuttle. Conversely, the remaining deck crewman and medic did not look happy at all. Starbuck just looked resigned.
"Chira, Sinon and the rest of you are coming with Starbuck and me." He ignored his wingman's uncomfortable sigh. "Check your gear and let's go. I don't want to be here any more than you do and the sooner we get on with this, the sooner we get to leave."
The two technicians shouldered their respective bags as the other warriors activated their handlights. Two more lights clicked on behind him as he looked down at the bloodstain, but the increased illumination did nothing to comfort him. Instead they made the midnight that had pooled around them in the damaged bay cling more closely.
"Chira, what do you think?" Apollo pointed down at the blackening stain. "Is Bojay in danger from his wound?"
The middle-aged woman looked down at the stain briefly before shaking her head. "Not from blood loss," she replied, "not if he bandaged his wound..." The discarded scrap Apollo had picked up earlier caught her eye. She toed the wrapper with her foot, "...which it seems he did." She looked up at the two warriors and shrugged. "He could have had some sort of internal injury that we don't know about. These stains aren't conclusive by any means."
"We should step this up," Starbuck's fingers drummed impatiently on his pistol butt. "Like you said, Apollo, the sooner we find Bojay, the sooner we can go home."
"Let's go," Apollo nodded.
The small group began making their way through the debris, following a thin trail of new, boot shaped smudges that led towards an open hatchway some dozen meters away. The two officers led, lights high, hands nervously clutching the grips of their weapons. Behind them the others followed, quiet and uneasy. The hatchway ahead was impossibly black, almost as though the darkness was a hunger that sucked in and destroyed light, rather than an empty void to be beaten back by it.
"I really don't like this," Starbuck muttered to himself.
They approached the doorway carefully, not as though there were something on the other side, but the way primitives might approach an unknown cave. Apollo went in first. His surprised gasp drew the others in. Starbuck's objection became much louder.
"Holy Frak."
Once upon a time this low roofed chamber had been brightly lit and had contained the machinery necessary to keep the fighters up and flying. Now, however the wreckage inside made the damaged landing bay look almost pristine. Long ago several of the large machines had sheared through their mounting bolts and rolled, or bounced across the bay, smashing through racks of tools and equipment, twisting conduits and stanchions and burning. The vacuum of space had probably killed the flames, but now that air had returned, so had the smells of ash and ozone, burned chemicals and meat. It must have been a slice of hell when the ship had been dying. Now it was a tomb, a forgotten torture chamber, an abattoir abandoned at the height of operations and left in the dark.
Apollo stepped into the nearest empty area that would accommodate him. Starbuck stood just inside the doorway, back to a heavily dented support. When the engineering tech looked around the hatch combing, his eyes grew round.
"Holy frak," he echoed. He stepped into the wreckage, flashing his light high and low as he stork-stepped a little further into the room.
"Stop." Apollo commanded.
"Sorry, it's just that..."
"That's fine," Apollo raised his hand to forestall any more chatter, "but if you keep going you're going to step on a corpse."
The tech' slight flashed down. The flight captain had been right. The yawning, mummified corpse of one of this battlestar's crewmen lay half trapped beneath a flipped wrack of welding tanks and rubbish.
"Oh. Thanks." Sinon answered in a voice too calm.
"Can we get on with this?" Starbuck looked over at his best friend anxiously. "What? This guy's been gone for a while. I'm sorry about his luck, but we're here for Bojay."
"You're right." The other warrior's light flashed around the room hurriedly, lighting on a narrow hole in the wreckage. "There. He went through there."
Starbuck frowned when he saw the jagged opening in the debris. "Apollo? Why in the name of Dis would he go through there?"
"I don't know," Apollo said as he climbed carefully over the tortured metal jetsam, "but look. There's some blood. His trail goes this way."
"Guys, wait up," Sinon said. "Let me look first."
"What?" Starbuck's light whipped around to focus on the tech's face. "Why would..."
"Look at this," Sinon's light stopped on a sheared off thumb of alloy. "See that? It's a mooring bolt. These machines weren't meant to move under battle conditions, but they're flipped around here like empty ale-cans. The ones on the Galactica didn't snap even after the hangar bay was rammed by Cylons. You guys may be pogey-blasting fiends in a Viper, but this is what I do."
"So caused did all this?" Starbuck demanded.
The tech began to climb carefully over the debris to join Apollo near the opening. "My guess is that when the port side tylium reserve detonated, it broke this ship's back and did all this as well."
"Could one explosion do that?" Starbuck asked.
"Depends on a lot of factors," the tech peered through carefully through the opening. "Unfortunately, all this damage tells me that the inertial dampeners failed."
"Like the ones on our Vipers?" the blonde pilot asked.
"Fighters have inertial compensators. They provide a sort of cancellation pulse when you hit your turbos, or execute some crazy maneuver," Sinon crawled through the opening very, very carefully. "Dampeners are the same but different. Larger ships have them to cancel out bigger impacts..."
"Like Cylons ramming the landing bay," Apollo concluded. "It would take a pretty big blast to knock them out, wouldn't it?"
"A tylium explosion big enough to vaporize a whole landing bay might do it." He panned his light around. "But if the dampeners failed, it would kill everyone aboard in an instant." There was a rubbing sound from the other side of the hole. "Uh-oh."
Apollo knelt and stuck his head through the hole. "What?"
"You'll should come in and see."
"Hey," Starbuck reached out, but Apollo was already moving. He looked over to the tense-faced Chira. "Did that sound like a set up to you?"
"Don't be stupid."
"Starbuck?" Apollo's voice called from the other side of the debris.
"Yeah?"
"Keep your eyes open. We've found some fresh blaster scoring in here."
"What?" He looked at the woman again. Without a signal, they both began making their way to the opening.
Apollo squeezed the switch on his headset. "Boomer. Boomer, do you read me?"
"****lo? Sa* ***in?" The hiss and pop through the headphones made it nearly impossible to recognize the warriors voice.
"Boomer, do you read?"
"Apo***?"
"Rescue Shuttle, do you read me?" Apollo shouted into his microphone. "Anyone read me?"
"Loud and clear, captain," Tyche replied. "What's wrong?"
"We've found signs of a struggle," Apollo announced. "Since we're out of communication, Lieutenant Boomer has command of the mission. If we're not out of here in two centars, all of you are to leave the wreck and head back to Galactica. Do you understand?"
"Wait, he wants them to leave us?" Chira demanded nervously.
"No, no," One of the other warriors put his hands on the older woman's shoulders to calm her. "We've got some time. You know we can't stay in this universe for too long."
"But he just said..."
"It's standard procedure," Starbuck looked back. "The order had to be given. We'll be out of here long before time's up." He gestured towards the hole. Chira gave him a wide eyed, incredulous look. "What? You want to go last?"
Something clattered outside. The woman ducked into the opening and crawled as fast as caution would allow. Starbuck's hand fell on his pistol. Suddenly being the last one through didn't seem like such a good idea.
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"But what would he be shooting at?" Chira's voice echoed oddly in the empty corridor.
"Shh," Apollo hissed. When he spoke again, he did so quietly. "I don't know, but I suspect pirates."
"Pirates?" she had the sense to whisper back.
"Why not?" Apollo asked. He looked back for a second to give the older woman a confident little smile. "Think what a perfect base this place would be. This is a huge wreck, with a debris field and a hangar to hide in..."
"Yeah, they could raid illegal salvagers..." Starbuck felt a smile slip across his face for the first time since this whole fiasco began. There was nothing creepy about pirates. Nothing at all.
Apollo nodded. "Outside there's a buoy warning everyone about a class nine hazard, so no one wants to come here. We've found no real radiation and no sign of dangerous munitions..."
His reassurances kept them going through another yawning hatch and into the corridor beyond. One of the other warriors, Dares, moved slightly ahead, though whether he was looking just for their missing pilot, or trying to forestall some hidden ambush, he didn't say. It wasn't long before he stopped at a three way intersection.
"More blaster marks here," Dares' harsh whisper carried back to the group easily.
When the group gathered around the warrior, both Apollo and Starbuck began to play their lights around. Apollo's quickly fell on another scored patch just a little further down the way, but it was Starbuck's light that found a group spattering one wall.
"Hey, guys? Over here." The blonde warrior stood near a patch of wall that bore three, large black stains in a tight group. Next to one was a dark, stinking spatter.
"Blow-through," Chira said as she bent to examine the marks more closely. "Whatever got hit here was biological." She pointed at the pattern on the wall. "As you can see, the power hadn't completely dissipated. It hit meat, vaporized part of it, the rest superheated and exploded onto the wall."
"Could someone live through that?" Apollo asked.
"Highly doubtful," Chira stood straight, reflexively wiping her hands on her tan skirt. "Our weapons are made to kill Cylons with one hit. The human body isn't made to take that kind of punishment."
"So where's the body?" Starbuck asked. He panned his light around the floor. "There's no stain on the floor, or marks where his friends carried him off."
"Nevermind that," Starbuck backed away from the wall, flashing his light around. "Check this out." He stopped his light in several more locations on the corridor wall. Each time he stopped on a blast mark.
"That's a lot of firing," the other warrior said.
"Yeah. A lot." Apollo agreed.
"Why would he fire so many shots?" Sinon asked.
"I don't know," Apollo replied. "Warriors are trained marksmen. He shouldn't have been waving his blaster around like a hose pipe."
"This is making me think we should find Bojay," Starbuck frowned. "Now."
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One of their wandering pools of light stopped on a human hand. Once it did, it didn't move again. "Oh felgercarb," Sinon whispered.
The group closed in a circle around the limb. All six lights focused on the same spot. Chira poked it with the tip of her service boot.
"Starbuck, take Dares and keep watch ahead," Apollo commanded. He looked to the older woman, "Chira, is that Bojay's hand?"
The pair stepped away, further up the corridor they'd been following. A sound just behind them made both men's hands fall to their blasters. Sinon raised his hands defensively.
"It's just me." Sinon held his hands out.
"Sorry," Dares had the good grace to sound embarrassed.
"If we keep going this way we'll be in the main part of the ship," Starbuck told the tech. "Crew decks."
"Why would he go there?" Sinon asked.
"Don't know. There's no point to it," the blonde warrior replied. "On a dead ship, there should be no supplies. Food should be corrupted, water pumps aren't functioning. There wouldn't be much he could use." He panned the light around again. "Did you hear that?"
"No." Sinon blinked out nervously into the dark. "Hey, shine your light out there again, at that support." The pool of light licked out again, stopping when the tech signaled. "There. See it?"
The pair advanced into the dark, closing on the support. Starbuck's pool of light tightened on a peculiar red smear.
"Bloodstain," Starbuck said.
"It's a hand-print. Sort of," Sinon observed. He reached up, comparing. "Left hand."
"Hey, Apollo?" Starbuck called back. He turned back to where his friend and the med-tech crouched over the limb. "Which hand is that?"
"Left, why?"
"It's not Bojay's," Starbuck replied. "Not unless he grabbed the support up here, chopped it off and threw it back there."
"It wouldn't be anyway," Chira said. She pointed to the nails. "Decoration. Unless Lieutenant Bojay painted his nails..."
"Hey," the warrior at the back called out towards a quickly moving shape. "Bojay?" He took several rapid steps back the way they had come before looking back. "I think I just saw Bojay. He's behind us." The man broke into a jog.
"Hektor, wait," Darius called back. He glanced at Starbuck for permission to go back.
"Hektor," Apollo's voice echoed as he rose. It was already too late by the time he'd started moving. The large framed warrior had already stepped around a corner. "Don't leave the group."
"It's okay," the voice called back. "He's just up here."
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The big man's pool of light wobbled as he jogged down the corridor towards the smudge leaning against a support member. A big grin split the warrior's face. Soon he'd be out of this hell-hole and he couldn't wait.
"Bojay, quit fracking around," Hektor called out. "We've been hunting for you for almost a centar. Let's get out of here."
Hektor suddenly stopped cold. Something was off. Even if the Colonial Warrior ahead of him had picked up every speck of ash and filth he could have in the machine-shop, his uniform wouldn't show blue.
"Captain, there's something weird going on here," the big man called back as he slowed his step. He glanced back just as Apollo turned the corner. "There's a guy up here, but I think he has a head injury. We may need that med-tech."
Hektor returned his eyes to the figure who was now leaning against a strut. For an instant he wondered if the high magnetic field could make him see things. A normal human should have been... wider.
The figure turned and the horror of it shut Hektor's brain down. His hand fell to the butt of his blaster more out of reflex than design. The warriors' face was lop-sided, as if half his head had been crushed. Even his shoulder and chest seemed compressed somehow. The corpse's good eye was weird. Cold. Glassy.
Sinon's voice seemed to whisper through the big man's bones. "But if the dampeners failed, it would kill everyone aboard in an instant."
The dead warrior rushed forward at a weird, rolling gallop. He wasn't fast enough to get to the big man before Hektor's blaster came up, shrieking energy into the dark. The dead man spun into the nearest wall as the energy bolt hit his torso and explosively converted a fist sized chunk of uniform, skin and bone beneath into carbon and stinking vapor. It barely slowed him at all.
"Hektor?" Apollo's voice rang down the corridor.
The big man managed a second shot, the muzzle of his pistol less than a meter from its target. Flame bloomed in the corpse's breast bone just before it slammed the big warrior, taking both of them down in a struggling pile.
Apollo froze. His white handlight played across shrieking Hektor. A blaster flared again and again between the two frantic shapes writhing on the deck. A sudden gout of burnt guts splashed hard on the ceiling as a bolt finally punched through. Hektor's sudden scream was pinched off as the once man tore into his throat with broken teeth.
Something moving in the darkness beyond pulled Apollo's light away from the horror show. There, in the unexpectedly trembling white, a large group of other figures strode hurriedly, clumsily forward. Most were whole, but all were obviously dead. They brought with them the stench of rot, or burnt meat and hair and the noise of hungry, animal moans.
The warrior's pistol leapt into his hand, but they ignored him to fall on Hektor's body, burying it in tearing fingers and teeth. The only thing that kept him from firing was that somehow none of them had noticed him yet.
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Chira and Sinon bolted towards Starbuck, colliding with Dares, who was already running for Apollo. The young warrior's blaster had leapt to his hand at the first sound of gunfire, but the screams sent him charging.
"Apollo!" he shouted.
Apollo didn't move. He stood paralyzed, with his weapon loosely pointed down the corridor. There was already a sheen of fear-sweat drenching his olive skin.
"Apollo, what's going on?"
"*s a*yone on thi* fre*ency?" the voice in his headset made Starbuck blink.
"Hello?" Starbuck stumbled, pushing the receiver tighter against his ear. Chira damn near knocked him over as she passed. "Hello? Who's out there?"
"Ident**y yours**f." The voice was female. He could tell that much.
Starbuck looked up in time to see Apollo grab Dares by his shoulders and all but throw him back up the corridor. "Run!" The brave flight-captain was gone. Only terror remained. "Fracking RUN!"
Apollo tried to grab Chira's sleeve with his blaster laden hand and jerk her along as he ran. "But what about Hektor?" the woman gabbled as she looked back.
"He's dead." Apollo's wide, panicked eyes swept the three just ahead of him. "Run! They're coming!"
Starbuck couldn't pay attention to the voice mumbling in his ear anymore, not when he saw what his handlight splashed against. Their uniforms were bloodied and burnt. Many of their faces were piecemeal patches of flesh, bone, or something black and crusty. His mind shut down, but his reflexes responded. Chira screamed and Starbuck's pistol began firing down the corridor.
The sound of blaster-fire tripped something inside Apollo's mind. He reached the small, fearful group and managed to pause. Then his own blaster came up and he started jerking the trigger frantically, strobing energy into the darkness.
Blue/white blooms exploded across the mass of bodies. Some staggered, but their unexpected judder brought on a surge. They began to charge.
"RUN!" Apollo shouted again. He pushed Starbuck with his handlight as he threw three last shots down the corridor.
No one needed to be told again. Dares bolted first, unfired pistol in his fist, pelting down the corridor as if he were on fire. Sinon was next, with Chira running a very close third. The bobbing blobs of their handlights made the surrounding darkness chaotic, confusing. Even so, Dares saw their salvation just ahead.
"Blast door!" he shouted back.
Neither Starbuck nor Apollo really heard him. They were terrified, barely slowing as they glanced back to throw wild shots into the shadowed horde. All they knew when they looked ahead was that suddenly their people were laboring to pull an armored door closed with their bare hands. The gap was already small and it was still shrinking.
Apollo fought hard not to chip a shot into the door, to let them know that he was still alive. He fought his terror again to shove Starbuck through. He wormed through screaming as half imagined hands reached out to jerk him back into the dark.
"Shoot, fracking shoot," Sinon shouted as he threw his pack down.
"The hatch isn't closed yet," Dares shouted back.
"That's why you should shoot!" Sinon barked over his shoulder as he dug.
Three blaster muzzles went into a gap only slightly bigger than they were. There was no aiming. Harsh, bright flashes strobed into the dark showing the hideous mass getting closer and closer.
"Fire in the hole," Sinon shouted and a bright, wheat yellow light exploded from the track inside the door.
"Frack!" Starbuck shouted, shielding his eyes a second too late. The sudden heavy thump of meat against the door made him leap back. Blinded, he tripped over someone else. they both fell.
Sinon's wail was an agony to hear.
"Go, go, go," Apollo holstered his pistol, knowing somehow that the pounding on the metal was a good thing. He reached down and grabbed the first person he felt, jerking them up.
A slender hand reached through and grabbed his pistol belt, but someone was already moving to help him. Apollo felt his body jerk again as the arm was hit or kicked once, twice, three times. Starbuck grabbed his flailing arm and pulled hard. As bones crunched beneath heavy, panicked boots, the hand lost much of its strength and he could finally pull away.
The group pounded down the corridor until they reached another armored door. Ancient disaster had also been left partially open. Within seconds the group had pulled it to within a finger's breadth of being closed. There was no sound of pursuit.
"Okay, cover your eyes this time," Sinon growled hoarsely.
This time everyone had time to notice the bloom of heat accompanying the long burning flash. Chira had shucked her own pack during the pause and was digging out something.
"Welding patch," Sinon panted. "That hatch ain't moving."
"That what you did back there?" Apollo asked.
Sinon nodded wordlessly as the woman sprayed something across his fried skin. Instantly his breathing smoothed and lost its half disguised whimper. There was another hiss as she sprayed something else.
"Rescue shuttle one," Starbuck's voice was a fearful noise in the background; "do you read?"
"We've got to keep moving," Apollo looked over at the pale faces of most of his group. "We've got to get back to the shuttle as fast as we can."
"What about Bojay?" Dares slumped against one of the navy-brown walls. "Are we just going to leave him?"
"You saw those things," Chira's voice grew thick as the wave of terror returned. "If they found us, they found him. He's gone."
"Frak that," Dares made to stand up. "We just lost Hektor. I'm..."
"She's right," Apollo looked over at the warrior. "As little as I like it, we've got to realize that he's probably..." an image of toothy slaughter swam before his eyes, "...he's probably dead."
"But this is a rescue mission..." Dares began.
"Listen, I've already lost one man, I'm not losing four more." His eyes flicked up to his best friend. Starbuck had frozen, wide-eyed. "Starbuck?"
"Apollo?" the younger warrior looked over, shock and fear coloring his features. "Set your headset for unicom."
I don't remember if I've said this before, the 'BSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSGBSG' thing is for scene and point of view changes. It alse lets me pass time, for a few minutes without going into too much detail. Yes, I know it's not really a tool that most professionals use, but hey, this ain't the Big Time. Usually if I have a day pass, or I like to drop a cliff hanger, I'll end the chapter.
Anys, thanx for reading. Please review. It really does make me work.