BSG: BUMP IN THE NIGHT
Disclaimer: You know.
A/N: Sorry about the rushed feel of the last couple of chapters. In between Christmas, New Years and all that entails, house fixes, work, et al, I've been pretty busy. I suppose, in a way, the last two chapters rather prove the old adage 'haste makes waste'. They're not as good as I could have done them and I know it. My job in the medbay on Galactica wasn't as creepy as I had envisioned, and the Zak/Cass/Sheba scene on Elysium was a conversational exposition that shouldn't have happened quite that way. I suppose a big part of it was that I wanted to prove that I really was working on it (and I wanted to hurry and get the Athena/Cassiopeia bit out there. Don't get me wrong, I like Starbuck, but sometimes I can resist sticking a pin in his ego. I'll cover more of the Athena/Cass relationship in the future, but don't count on any sexytimes. They're not the mains here.) I also know that I really handled the Starbuck interrogation scene poorly, it felt even more rushed than the rest once I read it again. Clumsy, you might say. I hope I didn't turn any of you off.
I'm working on the bossfight that will get Galactica and Elysium together, but there are still a few things to do to get that stage set. I'll try to do better from here on out.
This chapter is going to be a bit 'scientific' as well. Gonna explain the ghosties a bit. Hopefully you'll be entertained.
One last thing; see if you can figure out who I used as the admiral in this scene. I think JoBethMegAmy would. If she read this...
Chapter 6
Starbuck was overwhelmed with a serious case of deja vu. The room he they'd brought him to was very, very similar to the one he'd found himself in during the trial last yaren. Oddly enough, the faces on the other side of the board looked even more hostile.
Zak and Athena were at one end of the long table, talking. They looked weird, almost like negatives of themselves with the warrior cut uniform in bridge blue and Athena's techie-suit in warrior tan.
It was Athena who spoke first. "Thank you guards. Sit him down and take off his binders."
'That's a good sign,' Starbuck thought. He grunted as they sat him down hard. He changed his mind when Sheba, correction, Major Sheba continued.
"Behave yourself, whatever you are." Her eyes were hard and unwavering, like gunsights. "Don't take civility as softness. You get stupid, you get shot. Clear?"
"Crystal," Starbuck replied.
He noticed that Sheba sat just to the right of the center seat. 'That means that she's not the presiding officer,' the young pilot realized. He couldn't figure whether that was a good thing or not.
Zak rose from where he was leaning on the table and took the empty seat beside his sister. They filled two of the three seats on the left side. Both looked at him like he was a drek-skitter on their dinner plates. The blonde prisoner found himself oddly frightened, unable to hold their eyes. He looked away, wondering if some of his fear might be coming from the brain damage he'd heard Cassiopeia talking about two days ago.
The hatch behind the raised board opened and a white lab coat began to shoulder through. The young pilot had less than a microcenton to get his hopes up and then have them collapse as a shortish man with a thin moustache and greying temples slipped in.
Behind him came an equally short, somewhat stout woman in a well worn tan tunic. Her dark eyes, midnight hair and golden skin marked her as someone from the Sagittan Colony. Starbuck was surprised to see one of them here. Their bloodlines were rare even before the exodus. The Cylons had wiped out the Sagittan worlds a hundred yarens ago.
"Sorry, we're late," the older man said in a mild almost lilting voice. "It's my fault completely, I met Chief Seres in the corridor and had to ask about her findings. Mine were absolutely fascinating..."
"You're not late, Doctor Onias..." Sheba began.
Starbuck could have sworn he heard Zak murmur 'for a change.'
"...The Admiral's not here yet. Take your seat. He should arrive shortly."
The woman took her seat beside Zak and said nothing to anyone. She barely gave the man in the middle of the room a glance. The doctor moved quickly to an empty place on the other side of Sheba and thumped down a sheaf of printed hard copy. He was the only one so far to look at Starbuck as something other than a criminal, though the old man's little smile was more worrisome, if possible. He had the same sort of expression the young pilot imagined an overenthusiastic flitter-collector might have.
"Great. If I'm not a target, I'm someone's science project.' He sighed. 'What would Apollo do? What would Apollo do? What would Apollo do?' The words started to circle tighter and tighter in his brain, offering no guidance, but distracting him from the worry he felt filling his veins.
The door behind Starbuck hissed open and Zak jumped to his feet a micron faster than Athena. "Admiral on deck!"
"Remain seated." The voice was male and cavernously deep, something made for shouting orders above chaos and claxons. "Let's get on with it."
The metronome clunk-step, clunk-step that approached from behind somehow caused Starbuck's pulse to race. When the shape finally orbited around, the young man was surprised to see how slender the walker was. The man was tall, easily taller than Apollo, maybe younger than Commander Adama, but hatchet faced, as though whatever war these people fought had consumed flesh for payment. His gaze was hard, black and heavy as a hammer. Bristles like ferrite filaments lined his jaw and jutted threateningly at the prisoner. His was a face made to scowl and scowl it did.
"It does look like Captain Starbuck doesn't it?" The tall man kept his hands behind his back as he bent at the waist, putting his face closer to the pilot's, almost like he was about to sniff the air. "You say it identified itself as a lieutenant?"
"Yes sir," Sheba replied. "The name it gave was Lieutenant Starbuck of the Battlestar Galactica."
"Interesting." The man straightened. "I didn't think the Cylons left enough of her to salvage."
Sheba's eyes fixed on Starbuck. "No sir. Galactica was completely vaporized at Caprica."
"She's still doing her job," Zak said firmly.
"Of course," the admiral nodded as he straightened. "Adama and his ship are death-omens now, aren't they?"
"Yes sir," Zak replied. "Galactica last appeared above Typhon City before the All Hallows Conjunction. My father's warning got everyone to battle stations before the spooks showed on deep sensors."
"Wait," Starbuck blinked in surprise. "If your Galactica's gone, how did anyone broadcast a warning?"
The tall man's brow knuckled. "I see what you mean, Major. It certainly sounds like him, doesn't it?" He began to plod slowly around Starbuck. "The Battlestar Galactica is a death-omen, Lieutenant. As you should know, sometimes passion or devotion can hold a soul back. Commander Adama and his crew knew they would die if they got between three dreadhulks and their prize. The smart thing would have been to run, instead they threw themselves into the fire to save Caprica from annihilation. They bought a billion lives with their deaths. They buy them still."
"But how is that possible?" the blonde warrior asked. "Once you're dead, you're..." his voice faded as he remembered the hordes in the dark aboard the drifting ship.
The admiral nodded and turned away to clomp stiffly around the desk. It was only then that Starbuck saw the unholstered pistol he'd kept behind his back. When he put his weapon on the table, the barrel was still obviously pointing at Starbuck. The others rose again until he was seated.
"This doesn't make any sense..." Starbuck began.
"I'll say it doesn't," Zak muttered to the woman beside him.
"Then let's make some sense of it." The admiral leaned back. "I don't like mysteries and this close to the beast, we can't afford them. Lieutenant Athena, you'll begin. Discuss with the lieutenant exactly what we do know."
"Yes, Admiral Agathon."
The olive skinned woman rose and strode to a position between the pilot and the board. "As we all now know, the marker buoy placed in Laurentia's debris field first tracked a pair of unknown vessels about five days ago. They were following a wraith we knew to be the remains of Captain Starbuck..."
She must have triggered some small device because a glass screen descended from the ceiling at one end of the room. Almost immediately a tiny pair of sparks appeared in the green sky. The image jumped and jumped again as sensors corrected for distance.
"The strangers were apparently flying Vipers," Athena continued, "but as you'll see in a moment, they have almost no markings on them at all. We also began intercepting transmissions from them almost immediately. Even at long range, the pilots are easy to identify." She hit another button and Starbuck's broken voice began spilling from hidden speakers.
"H*s pu****ng *head."
"Ye**, I s**. ****rently what**er is draw*ng off our e***gy do***t aff*ct ***." It was hard to follow the meaning of the words through all the hiss and pop, but the voice's owner was an easy guess. It was Apollo. "He's go*** full ***itar* sp**d. We're not. The **fect just isn't as pronounced when **** *** ******* *** turbos."
"Is there any way to clean these transmissions up?" The admiral's voice seemed almost like a bellow after the muted noise coming from the records.
"We've made transcripts sir," Athena replied. "It's all in the formal report before you on the table before you. "Pretty standard stuff. Just what you might imagine from two pilots in their situation."
"Why is there so much interference at all?"
"It's their hardware, sir," the Sagittan woman leaned forward to reply. "It looks like ours superficially, but their capabilities are far less. With your permission, I would like to address all of their shortcomings at once."
"Fine, fine," the admiral gestured. "Continue lieutenant."
"Yes sir." Athena kept the footage running, but muted the sound. "The rest of their conversation is a bit odd..."
"Odd?" the tall man rumbled.
"Yes sir. In many ways, their conversation is similar to what might be expected of two pilots encountering a derelict ship. However, at no time do they mention the warning from our buoy, nor do they consider the presence of wraiths even when they're obviously flying through war wreckage."
"Well, Lieutenant Starbuck? Can you explain?"
"Admiral," Starbuck made to rise, but a pair of hard hands pushed his shoulders down. "When this was recorded, Apollo and I had no idea there was a warning signal. We had just tried cycling through our coms and gotten this... this noise on Beta Channel. I still don't know what wraiths are."
"You went to Beta Channel?" Sheba sat straighter and turned to the mild man beside her. "Are you sure that..?"
"No, no," the doctor held up a finger and smiled. "They aren't possessed. I looked for that." He looked to the admiral. "It's standard procedure, Agathon. I wouldn't make a mistake like that..."
"Enough," the admiral barked. "This will be handled in order. There will be no chaos." He lowered his voice slightly. "I was wrong to interrupt. Athena, you will continue with your phase until it's complete."
"Yes, sir." The woman nodded back to the screen. "It's all pretty short. These two faux-Vipers made a pass on Laurentia and returned on their approach vector. There was nothing else for almost thirty centars."
She faced the display again and once more two Vipers appeared. "Two more birds appeared on the same approach vector and we monitored their transmissions once more. This time we got a real surprise..."
"Th*s was th** ve***r," Sheba's broken voice was clear enough to cause a scowl on her duplicate. "W* **ould be ma*ing co***ct soon."
"Pop, ski**er," Bojay announced. "Larg* ma*s dea* *head. Diplac*s *ike a batt****ar."
All eyes turned to the major, who was now looking at the screen with a strange, hard, hurt expression. Her brow was clenched, but she bit at her lip almost like she was trying not to cry out.
"B* the Lord*," Bojay breathed. "I woul*n't ha** beleiv*d it if * **dn't seen it."
"Concentra**. We don* know wh*t's out here," Sheba commanded.
"Orders?"
"For now *e fo**ow the sa** flight path as Ap**o and Starbuck."
"*** we going to se**rate?"
"Negative."
Major Sheba nodded.
"Their flight went pretty easily for the next few centons," Athena supplied as she fast forwarded the scan data. "They had lined up on Captain Apollo's flight path and had begun their first fly-by when Starbuck and six other wraiths jumped them."
"Yeah, that would do the job well enough," Zak frowned.
"Except that it didn't," Athena said. "Watch here."
Starbuck goggled as bits of wreckage began to pull themselves together, forming well chewed, but familiar shapes. Words failed him as he saw dark, empty thrusters fire up with a bilious green fire and swerve towards the white ships from Galactica.
One ship in particular sent a chill through his blood. The camera caught a perfect shot of a Viper that had been ripped and burned until it was nearly nothing. The first metron of the little ship's nose had been sheared off and there was a long, wide burn scar that led back to the portside engine. He could see support ribs through the gash. The turbo laser on that side was just gone, as was the leading edge of the wing. Even the engine looked smashed open and gnawed like something big had been feeding there. But the worst, most frightening thing of all was the cockpit. The canopy was just gone. No plexi, not even the frame was left. Starbuck watched in growing terror as the charred pilot turned his head to look for his wingmen. When the little ship turned, the corpse leaned with the motion.
"Sensors showed standard englobement tactics. They split their force to maximize their chance of catching our strangers, but they didn't quite pull it off," Athena said. "The two in the back were coming in for their kill shots when something very unusual happened."
"Two on **r tails, Skipper," Bojay announced.
"Then let* show them wha* they want to s*e."
Instantly Galactica's two fighters slammed to a near stop, letting the two dead birds shoot by. As soon as they were past, Sheba and Bojay cut loose with half a dozen fat, orange bolts, turning their enemies into clouds of rapidly dissipating gas.
Bojay's howl of triumph was cut short as one of the flankers moved in and fired a burst of strange emerald fire. The first bolts missed, but one clipped the central power distribution panel on his starboard side. There was a shower of sparks and an eruption of flame, but Bojay's stricken Viper didn't explode.
"Hit, hit, hit," Bojay shouted into his mic. "Losing power on two engines. I think... *** star-side is dying."
"Get i* front of me," Sheba commanded. "I'll cover you unti* we get back to the hol*."
"No way," Bojay rolled his bird, firing at another attacker. He missed. "I've got about fifty percent thrust. You'll die trying. *scape and evade. Come back with help." His machine stuttered around to face the maw of the landing bay. "I'll s** **** here. I've got a berth picked out."
There was a long pause as the woman on the monitor thought. In the dim of the conference room Starbuck could here the major whispering.
"No,no,no,no..."
"Right. I'll be b***," Sheba replied curtly. "Don't talk to strange women."
"Ha-ha. Just bri** them with you."
The Vipers parted as a slew of green fire lit the area.
"Lieutenant Bojay's Viper made a successful crash landing on Laurentia," Athena said. "He escaped the wreckage with relatively minor initial injuries. The other Viper retreated on it's original vector. None of the pursuing wraiths have returned, including Captain Starbuck."
"Very good." The corners of Agathon's lips quirked upwards.
"The last intrusion was less than eight centars later. Two and a half days ago for us," Athena moved the footage forward again and this time there weren't two ships, there were five. "As you can see, there are four faux-Vipers flying overwatch on what can only be a shuttle..."
"But it's unarmed," Zak leaned forward, studying the fat-bodied shape growing larger on the monitor. "There's no turrets, no shield generators, no AEM pods. It's just a big target."
"Thank you for your observations, lieutenant," the admiral growled. "They will be noted. Continue Athena."
"Yes sir. Lieutenant Zak is pretty much right," Athena agreed. "From the information Major Sheba and Chief Seres have provided, as well as testimony from our interrogations, we know that the rescue team had no idea what they were getting into. They weren't equipped for the environment on Laurentia. It's a miracle that Lieutenant Starbuck and his group survived."
"W-what about the shuttle?" Starbuck stammered.
Athena said nothing. She just keyed up the footage that showed the fat ship's escape. No effort was made to mute the screams or shouts from the ship to her escorts, just as no one said anything as Boomer took command of the mission and led a fighting retreat.
"This ends my part of this briefing," Athena said. She marched back to the board, dropped the controller before the admiral and sat.
"Onias, you're up," Agathon said. "tell me why I shouldn't order these creatures spaced."
"Well, I suppose the easiest way to say it is this; you'd be a murderer." That got a gasp from one or two of the others. "Yes, they count as creatures, but so do we. We're creatures called human beings and, according to every test I know, so are they." The older man didn't bother standing, instead he just leaned over, took the remote and began fiddling. "As you might have already heard," he said as he fumbled with the device, "they don't posses the malleable DNA of Doppelgangers, nor do they have the extra thalamic lobes that allow them to mimic... oh, just about everything. No frontal lobe adaptations to make them some kind of Siren. No appearance surgery scars, brainscan showed nothing that shouldn't be there if they were human." He gave up and dropped the little device. "It did however fail to show something that should."
"I knew it," Sheba's face took on a new, predatory look as she leaned forward.
"It may not be quite what you think Major," Onias cautioned. "You see, ever since Colonial man went out into the stars, we've suffered from the intense electromagnetic fields our universe subjects us to. In the early days our ships couldn't generate the power fields necessary to blot out that energy, so our race had to hop from world to world to world, where a planetary field could protect us..."
"Is this going to be a long history lesson, Doctor?" Agathon rumbled.
"No, no. It's just that even now we subject ourselves to these high density fields. Of course nowadays we have regenerative treatments and drugs to counteract neural cell degradation and all that works very well, but the one thing it can't get rid of is our scars."
"Scars?" Zak asked.
"Oh yes," the doctor nodded. "You see, any time we are exposed to the universe, our brains react badly. They begin to die. That's why we wear 'daggit tags' now, to prevent that damage. But still, there are times when we're exposed. Our treatments repair that damage, but with sensitive instruments we can still see where those repairs have occurred." He looked at Starbuck with a curiously happy sort of leer. "These people have no such scars. All the damage they've sustained is their first."
"Couldn't the same thing be said of clones?" Sheba asked.
"Oh it could, it could, but then there's the logic problem," Onias replied.
"Logic problem?"
"Lieutenant Starbuck here couldn't possibly exist as a clone," the older man smiled. "You see, our Captain Starbuck died in this sector roughly two yarens ago. Yet here is a brand new Lieutenant Starbuck. The Cylons wouldn't be able to take a cell from every child born on Caprica, so they couldn't have spent twenty-something yarens letting him grow naturally. Nor does this one have cellular damage from force growth that a clone would. This is a real Starbuck."
"Chemically his blood is just like ours," Onias continued, "but again, he doesn't have certain tell-tales that we do. He's never been injected with panimmunity or interferon. Ever. Everyone aboard this ship has, it's the first thing that happens to anyone who joins the service. Most of the decent shipping companies immunize their crews as well. Even the private pilots usually go to a doctor before they leave home..."
"So wait," Zak broke in. "If he's never had his shots and we just got him from Laurentia, he could have any one of a hundred plagues."
"Yes he could," Onias gave that happy, eerie smile again. "And he did. Everyone not protected by an environmental suit had massive infections of Anthracis, Cryptococcus Neuromyces, Mononegavirales B and a couple of lesser strains. Quite a mix, quite a mix..."
"Excuse me Doctor Onias," Starbuck interjected nervously, "but what does all that do?"
Onias nodded pleasantly. "Well, Cryptococcus and Anthracis are both primarily spread through the air, though Anthracis can be absorbed through the skin. It can even stay dormant you see, encysted against pure vacuum and hard radiation for years..."
"Yeah, but what do they do?"
"Oh, yes. Well as I said, Anthracis and Cryptococcus Neuromyces are airborne. They get into your lungs and kill you. Cryptococcus breeds, gets into your bloodstream and spreads to your brain. If left alone, you experience hallucinations, emotional control. You go mad and are dangerous to everyone around you. Of course Anthracis will have killed you first." His little smile hadn't faded. "Anthracis breeds in your lungs and kills you, but that's an effect, not the purpose of the bacillus. You see, it likes dark, moist environments, environments a bit cooler than a human body."
"But if I die, won't I cool off?" Starbuck asked in a slightly less than courageous tone.
"Oh yes, yes, but as your body decays, it will generate heat as a byproduct," Onias replied. "That level of heat is just perfect for Anthracis. But the thing that makes it so interesting is that when it's in its chosen environment, it releases spores so that it can infect others. In fact, you're more dangerous when you're dead than if you had remained alive. It doesn't take much to make those spores release and any post mortem exhalation will shoot them up into the air like a fountain."
"Oh. Great."
"That's where the Mononegavirales B comes into play..."
"Yeah?" Starbuck asked weakly.
"Oh certainly. Certainly. You see, Mono-B is the organism that reactivates your thalamus after you die. You do know what the thalamus does, don't you?"
"No."
"Well, some people call it the 'lizard brain', but I don't like the term." Onias' face developed a little moue, but it didn't last long. "What it does is control your involuntary reflexes and instincts. Hunger, thirst, the need to procure food are all housed in the thalamus. Simply put..."
"Too late, Doc," Zak interrupted. He looked at Starbuck. "The first one makes you an intelligent danger to everyone around you while it tortures you to death. The second one makes you a danger to everyone around you before and after you're dead and the third one picks you up and makes you eat people after you're a corpse." He leaned over. "Right Doc?"
"Well, that's a bit brief," his smile broadened, "but it's essentially correct."
"So wait a centon," Starbuck started to rise, but was put back in his seat again, "you mean that anyone who went on that wreck got infected with this stuff? That the people who got away on the shuttle could have carried that back to the Galactica?"
"If they're as ignorant as you seem to be about it, then I would say that there's a good chance that the second generation and even possibly a third could be rising now." Onias said. "Twelve hours would be enough to kill anyone primarily exposed. After that it's up to chance what gets the next set. Mono-B will kill a human within twenty centars, if it's passed through a bite. A centar after that, they'll rise."
Sheba, Zak and Athena all had the good grace to look uncomfortable at the little man's apparently happy revelation. Admiral Agathon's expression grew harder, but his eyes took on an oddly fierce, haunted caste, as if he were trying to bully a memory.
"But Cass said that there was no Curse-virus and no venom sacs..." Starbuck's face opened in desperation. "If there's none of that..."
Athena and Zak glanced at each other, remembering the conversation. It was Zak who spoke first. "Curse Virus is something Commander Creel thought of, or found, or traded for. We don't know. Anyway, it's kind of a mix of A and Mono-B, only it doesn't kill you. It lives in your lungs, in your blood, and you spread it just by breathing. When you die, you rise." He looked over to the admiral who was still staring thoughtfully at their prisoner.
"It's the least deadly, but most insidious thing he's got," Athena supplied. "From what we've seen on the tapes, it's not what he did with your shuttle."
"What do you mean?"
"Creel's smart, very smart," Athena frowned. "He used to be a battlestar commander, after all. He would have noticed how easily you wandered into his web. You people didn't take any precautions at all. You were the perfect flit for this crawl-on and you sailed right into his web with your eyes open and a song in your heart."
"What they're trying to tell you, is that your shuttle crew was probably dead as soon as you were out of sight," Sheba growled. "The air in the bay was flooded with A, Crypt-N and Mono-B. He sent some pet lemmies to kill some of your people and the survivors panicked, carrying back infected corpses to make a new cyst for the Cylons. No clever tactics needed. After three days, the corridors of wherever you're from are probably full of lemmies, and if they're not, then there will sections of your 'battlestar' that are now inaccessible. If you're commander is smart, he'll self destruct rather than let the infection spread."
Finally overwhelmed, Starbuck leapt to his feet, shouting. "You've got to warn the Galactica." The rough hands of his guards snatched and pulled, but he shook them off. "They'll be defenseless."
"Sit down, Lieutenant," the admiral boomed. Around him, the other warriors began to stand.
"NO! You don't understand," Starbuck strode forward, heedless of the blasters rising to greet him. "We don't have a fleet anymore, just one battlestar. We're all humanity has on the other side of the hole. If Galactica dies, so does every other human in our universe..."
He froze. Three blaster barrels stared at him like death's own eyes. An instant later the guards had seized him and jerked him violently back to the seat.
"Enough!" Agethon bellowed again. "Lieutenant Starbuck, you will remain in that seat, or you will be removed, am I clear?"
"But sir, I..." Strong hands held his shoulders still and he looked up at the faceless guards.
"Am I clear, Lieutenant?" The admiral's growl was much more sinister than Sheba's ever could be.
"Yes sir."
"It's been days, Lieutenant," Agathon's voice lowered to a grim, but genuinely regretful tone. "Even if I believed your story, it's been long enough that your ship is probably lost."
"But there's a chance..."
"Not much of one, I'm afraid," Doctor Onias said. "Among the ignorant, outbreaks can propagate with great speed..."
Starbuck scrubbed his face with his hands.
"Then let me go back," Starbuck said. "I'll go alone. Look, knock me out if you want, do whatever you need to keep yourselves safe, just put me on the right vector and cut me loose."
"There would be nothing you could do..." Sheba bit.
"Anything is better than nothing," Starbuck fired back, "which is what you're doing. You want to hate me because I'm not from here, then fine, but give my people a chance. They did nothing to you, and they're all the humans there are..."
"Take him back to his cell," the Admiral said in a low voice. "We'll continue this without his input."
So. Hope this one was better. It's more of what I had in mind. (Since I don't get time off, I have time to work at work. No one's here but me.)