BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT
DISCALIMER: I own nothing, yada-yada-yada. No profit, yada-yada, no intent to infringe, yada. Agricola MacDonald senex. E-I-E-I-O.
A/N: I gotta confess, I hope this frustrates you guys just enough to keep you interested, without being enough to drive you away. I had a couple of options on what to do on ye olde battlestar, but rather than explain the chemistry/physics of the zombies, I decided to put that off a little while longer and make things ever so slightly worse. I know that's probably not what you wanted to hear, but it brought a smile to my face. Seriously, hope you enjoy.
Chapter 4
"Adama?" Colonel Tigh called softly into the dim office. "Commander, are you here?"
He stepped softly, almost nervously into the room, as if he was afraid of what he might find. It was the same office he'd come into a thousand times over the yarens. And every time he'd come, Commander Adama had been the one with the answers. He'd seen the Commander drive himself beyond any limit he could have imagined, from the initial evacuation of the Colonies, through the long retreat and the raids that had followed. Every time the fates seemed arrayed against them, the Commander had risen to the challenge. Until Lieutenant Boomer had come back without Apollo. For the first time he hadn't seen the strong, confident Lord of the Fleet. Instead, his place had been taken by a frail old man, out of place and lost on the bridge. Tigh had seen him retreat, escape. Hide.
"Commander Adama?"
Tigh called out again. A deep, nauseating fear seized him when his searching eye lit on the wide back of the commander's chair. It was turned away from the doorway, almost as if hiding something. It was too easy to imagine a corpse, just waiting to be discovered.
"Commander?" His hand touched the back of the seat. The sound of shifting made him relax. "Sir, are you alright? Should I call Doctor Salek?"
"Hm? What?" Adama's head didn't turn so much as twitch. "Tigh?"
"Here Commander. I came to see if you were well." He regretted the words immediately. Of course the Commander wasn't well. If events were to be believed, he'd just lost his firstborn son. His mouth rattled ahead on autopilot. "I-Is there something I can do for you, sir?"
"What? No. I was... making a log entry..." He looked up, heavy brows contracting "Tigh, I can't think of what to say..."
His confused tone sent an icy chill down the black man's spine, but somehow he managed to keep a neutral expression and calm voice. "It's alright, sir. I can take care of it." He was very careful when he set the microphone aside. "Perhaps you should rest. It's been a long day..." He took the old man's arm and helped him from the chair.
"But there's still so much to do... The void... We need to prepare a rescue..." He stopped, blinking. He turned to face his constant exec, black eyes stern. "No. No more rescues. We've lost so many..." His eyes softened again and Adama seemed to shrink in on himself, becoming more fragile. "...So very many."
"Yes sir, I understand..."
"Order the fleet to stop for a while. Apollo... Perhaps they all can find a way back..." He squeezed the officer's forearm with an unexpectedly trembling hand. There was a tone in his voice, a need to have his words be believed. "We can use the time for maintenance. Some of our ships are on their last legs. Put the Galactica as a picket between the void and the fleet. Increase the number of patrols..." His voice faded as the pair reached the door to his private chambers. He waved at the button, but seemed unable to hit it.
"Yes Commander," Tigh nodded, opening the door. "I'll have it done." He changed his grip so that he was supporting, steering the old man. "If you'd care to rest for a while..."
It took a few moments to get Commander Adama inside. Every step he'd taken had put more and more weight in the Colonel's hands. When they'd arrived at the narrow bed, Colonel Tigh had taken the old man's boots off. Adama had just lain back without attempting his uniform. He closed his eyes.
Tigh walked to the Commander's desk and pressed a button.
"Medbay." The voice that answered wasn't immediately familiar.
"This is Colonel Tigh. Could you send Doctor Salik to Commander Adam's quarters?"
"Is this an emergency?"
"I-I'm not sure," Tigh replied. He looked uncertainly back towards the closed hatch. "Just have him come up."
"Right away, sir."
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The lines of Salik's face seemed to deepen, to become sharper as he sighed. He looked across the low-ceilinged room to a cluster of iso-units, where Cass and one of the techs-in-training, Miranda, were loading the instrument trays. The blonde was still a touch pale and her movements were a little too controlled since the news had broken, but she seemed to be bearing up beneath the stress.
Not far beyond them the first body lay waiting. It was Sabas, the trauma technician he'd released to help bring Lieutenant Bojay back. Now he was lying in a silver tube, awaiting primary death examination.
"Cassiopeia," he motioned for the blonde to join him. When she arrived, he spoke in a much lower voice. "Colonel Tigh has summoned me to the Commander's quarters."
"Is everything alright?" she asked.
"I doubt it. Colonel Tigh believes that he's suffered some sort of breakdown." His frown deepened as the young woman's eyes clouded with still more pain. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Cass, I know this can't be easy for you, first Starbuck, now Adama. If you need some time..."
"No. Thanks." She offered a weak smile. "I need to be here to work. If I were on my own, I'd have time to think."
Salik grunted and squeezed. "I swear I've never been one to yield to superstition, but I'm beginning to think that this mysterious 'hole' is cursed. Everything that comes in contact with it..." He cut himself off with a final sigh, turned and took up his little bag. "Listen, you've done preliminary examinations before. You and Miranda can handle this, I'm sure. Just do a gross exam and get him ready for the imager."
"I understand," the blonde replied.
Salik noticed how tired, but oddly resolved she looked. "I'll be back as soon as I can, but if I'm not, you can begin the resonance examination and while the scan cycle is running, you can start the gross exams on Icarion and the rest."
"We can handle it."
"I know you can." He gave her shoulder one last squeeze and turned to go. "One last thing," he glanced back over his shoulder, "use full biological safeguards. We don't know what's in the air over there."
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The officer's club was nearly silent. Part of it had to do with the time. It was very, very late and those warriors who weren't out on tonight's combat patrol were probably asleep. There were four other pilots up at the bar, murmuring. They hardly looked Boomer's way at all. He couldn't hear what they were saying and he didn't care anyway. The other part of the silence was the ghosts.
A week ago one of Starbuck's stink-weeds would have been corrupting the air. There might have been a card game going. The blonde man would either have been touting his latest system, or Apollo would be laughing good-naturedly as that system invariably failed. He took a deep draught from his mug, killing the dregs. There was a faint clank as another touched down on the table.
Athena said nothing as she sat down, staring into her own tankard. She didn't even look over. Boomer picked up his mug and they drank. The mugs were halfway empty before she spoke.
"It's not your fault, you know." She looked into the face of the man's silence. "There was no way to know what would happen. You couldn't have done more than you did."
Boomer pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I know. That doesn't make it any easier."
Athena nodded, knowing that neither of them would find the right words. They drank.
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"It's got to be some kind of trick," Miranda repeated. She leaned forward to cut more of the corpse's tan uniform away. "There's no way that any of these could have moved, never mind boarded the shuttle and killed Sabas and Icarion. Look at them. They're just... broken. This one's showing signs of long term exposure to vacuum."
"I know, I know," Cass replied as she closed the pod back up on the dead ground crewman. She shook her head once as the silver metal locked shut over his torn flesh. "If someone else had told me about all this, I'd have thought that they were vac-happy. But the evidence all points to just that." She nodded to the corpse the intern was stripping. "That's fresh blood on his mouth and fingers. Speaking of, you'll need to get a swab before we put him in the imager."
"Don't sweat it, boss," Miranda replied. She grimaced as she pulled the cut section of his tunic away. "Gah." She shook her head. "There's no way. Look at this. The left side of his ribcage is crushed. His shoulder's misshapen and some of his ribs have pushed out through his chest. I don't think this guy could have moved very far before vacuum started desiccating him."
Cass started moving Icarion's pod into the walk-in cryo unit. "Well, it's not our job to decide whether he did or not. It's our job to perform the preliminary examinations. Just record the evidence as it is and let that make our conclusions for us."
"At least that's what the doc would say," Miranda nodded. "This is just too weird."
"You don't know the half of it," Cassiopeia replied.
The silver tube went into the freezer where the machinery stacked and stored it away. She returned to the other woman and her subject and went to work. It didn't take long to finish undressing the dead man, swab the blood on his hands and mouth and then move him into the magnetic resonance imager.
"Cass, could we knock off after this scan?" The woman pointed at the time index on one of the screens. "It's oh-two-hundred. I'm getting tired."
"Yeah. That'll be fine." She glanced over when she realized that her words had a touch of bite. "Sorry. I really appreciate the way you've helped me, especially after Doctor Salik released us earlier."
"No problem." Miranda offered a tentative smile. "I know things are tough for you right now. I'd help more, but I'm almost dead on my feet."
The blonde nodded as she checked the monitors, making sure their body had been placed correctly. When she was sure everything was as it should be, she began pressing buttons. Across the room magnets began to whirl and hum. The machine went to work.
"Okay, I'm getting a good surface survey," Miranda said as she watched the computer duplicate the man's skin. She checked another screen. "Looks like a good albedo scan as well." She watched the graphs peak and dip. "Lots of carbon. Probably explosion remnant."
"Makes sense," Cass replied. "All the strangers look like they came out of a battle zone." She checked her own monitors carefully. "Deep scans are good as well. Looks like we'll have the complete model in a few minutes, then we can put him in the cryo unit and keep him for reference."
The machine hummed for a few moments more as the two women watched their screens. "You don't really think these guys came back to life, do you?" Miranda asked.
"I don't see how they could... Hey, did you see that?"
"See what?" the brunette looked over to the monitor Cass seemed to be studying so intently.
"I thought I saw a twitch."
"Not possible. This guy's been dead too..."
"Too long to have any sort of residual reflex. I know," Cass nodded. "Look, there it is again."
"I see it," Miranda frowned. "I don't believe it, but I see it." She looked back to her own monitors. "Oh frak," she breathed. "He just opened his eyes."
They both looked up as a sound came from the machine. Something groaned.
A/N: This one came out a bit rushed, so sorry if the dialogue seems a little labored. I knew what I saw, but somehow the short, declaratives, didn't seem to have a ton of impact for me. So if you have any suggestions, let me know. One doesn't improve from success (or silence), but from mistakes, so if you see any, tell me, plz.