" . . .arstow Station, to Guiana Control, over. Repeat, Barstow Station to Guiana Control, over. Barstow Station reporting failure in main power reactor. . ."
Apollo zeroed in on the signal, nodding at Dietra not only when it became stronger, but when he picked up indications of some sort of artificially constructed shelter on the fourth planet, that Dayton had called "Mars". Apparently, Earthmen had made it to Mars, subsequent to Dayton's Space Station disaster. Belatedly, he wished the Colonials had taken the extra time to equip the Hybrids with languatron technology, or that Ryan had had the time to create enough of his newly developed languaphones that more of their pilots could interpret the Earthspeak that was now spewing out of the comm suite, sounding like a flock of chattering poulons in distress.
"Even after all these sectars, I still can't make any sense of their language," Dietra admitted quietly beside him. "Except for maybe three or four words." She paused. "'Jaysus Murphy'. 'Lord thundering Jesus'. 'Bloody Hell'. . ."
"Well, in this case, the tone of voice speaks louder than the words," Apollo interrupted her Earthspeak recital, as he redirected the signal to the Endeavour's Control Centre, awaiting orders. "They're in some kind of trouble down there."
"Any idea what sort?" she asked.
"Not clearly, but I think they're having some kind of technical problem. I picked up the word . . . uh, failure."
"I hope they're okay," said Dee, looking at the dusty world, on her screen. "Lousy place to get stranded."
xxxxx
They had had to alter course to intercept it, but now that her War Book could analyse it, the signal that Lu was picking up was identified as Cylon. However, the probe carrying the emergency beacon out across the star system, rather archaic and crude, was just as certainly from Earth. One only had to plot its course back to the point of launch. Oh, it was supposed to be classified, but she'd heard the rumblings of the Cylon Raider that had crash landed on Earth's moon, and the emergency beacon that had been activated, to lead the Cylons across the galaxy to their prey. Starbuck had mumbled about it in his sleep a time or two, as events revealed to him by Ama in a vision of sorts weighed heavily on his mind. Evidently, rather than just destroy the beacon, leaving only a recent point of transmission to trace and investigate, the Earthlings had instead chosen to send it on a journey away from their homeworld. A decoy. It would have been a reasonably good idea if the probe could move faster, rather than being strapped to an old-style chemically fuelled rocket that would take yahrens to get between planets, and if the Cylons weren't already suspected to be in the vicinity.
She frowned as she "eyeballed" Starbuck's ship off her wing on her ship's scanner. What would he decide to do? After all, the Dynamo that his ship was armed with could only scramble the circuitry, deactivating the beacon, and leave the probe to sail on, inert. The Cylons could still find it. Not that it would matter much, with all the transmissions they had picked up coming from Earth. A Cylon Base Ship would have to be blind, deaf and down on diodes to not detect the multitude of transmissions coming from the planet.
A moment later, they were passing the probe by, leaving it unscathed. Not too surprisingly, Starbuck had decided it wasn't worth blowing their cover. After all, damaging the decoy would only raise the question at this point of who had interfered.
xxxxx
"Our intel shows that the Guiana complex is preparing to launch another space shuttle, Whatley," Mason reported to the British Joint Intelligence Committee Chairman, while slowly rolling his cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. He was making one last secure sat-call before informing the irrepressible General Roach that there was a Intelligence Community meeting in Washington they would be attending, before flying to Colorado. Of course, the content was completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, which would annoy Roach to his limit.
"Ours as well," Whatley replied, exhaling slowly over the line. Like his American counterpart, he was also a smoker. Heavy. He practically mainlined tobacco. "That was a bad show with the Unity, Mason. Damned bad!" He blew out a stream of smoke, his lip curling in anger. "Our skipper almost hopped the twig on that one. If he hadn't jinked away at the last moment . . ."
"Hopped the . . .?" Mason asked, more because it was expected than because he wanted to know.
"Died, man!" Whatley snorted. He took a slow drag. "After that, Marshall Leach and I are planning a little reception of sorts for WASA's next launch."
"That's what I wanted to hear, Whatley." He smirked. "About time those upstarts were cut down to size."
"A calculated guess would have them heading for Kazakhstan," Whatley continued, idly.
"Oh?" Now, that hurt. Whatley obviously knew something he didn't, but he schooled his face to remained nonplussed. "Tell me about your figures."
"A space shuttle was seen landing at Baikonur Space Centre." His image was momentarily replaced by images of the Venture, on the tarmac, surrounded by various vehicles. "We received these less than six hours ago. About the time your lot was sitting on the Unity at Kennedy. Interesting?" Whatley practically crowed, making Mason want to rip his face off and use it for a shoe rag.
Mason sneered, taking all of a second to put it together. "That . . . bitch!" He would redouble his efforts to find LM Dayton, and use her as bait to bring in the older sister. Hmm . . . their mother . . .
"You'll be pleased to know that I've spoken with Director Borodin."
"I'm listening." Yuri Vladimirovic Borodin was the Director for the Main Directorate of Intelligence for the Russian Federation.
"He has Spetsnaz Forces already in Kyzylorda. They will move in and take the Space Centre."
"How will he explain that . . .?"
"Kazakhstan is merely moving ahead in world cooperation while forging an increasingly effective world partnership to combat the terrorist threat," Whatley supplied, not even cracking a smile. "Plausible deniability is being put in place as we speak. Trust me, WASA is about to go down in flames, like her predecessor."
Mason chuckled. "Tally-Ho, old chap!"
xxxxx
After fourteen hours of evading an untimely end, Lauren Dayton tossed and turned in the old, lumpy bed, her exhausted mind suffused by dreams. Images she knew, or should know, ripped across her vision, things . . . things that refused to stand still.
Who . . .
I'm here! I'm here, baby. It's me! I've come back!
Who? Who are you? I can't see you!
Reach out to me, Baby! Reach out to me. I'm here!
I . . . Oh God! It can't be . . .
Honey! I'm here! I'm here, Lauren Michelle . . .
"DADA!" she shouted, snapping awake, and nearly rolling off onto the floor. She looked around. As her breathing settled down, she remembered where she was. She was in the bedroom of the dingy, filthy "safe house" she'd made it to, after evading the hit squad sent after her. She wiped her brow, dripping with sweat, the sheets soaked through. Oh, she hated those hot summer days with no AC. Absently, she rubbed her bandaged arm, checking the graze. Slowly, she got up and moved to the dirty window, peeking between the blinds.
It was a dull rainy day outside, the streets of Chicago bustling with activity. What a ride it had been to get here! Two cars, a dirt bike, a plane, another car and the Chicago 'L' later, she'd made it home. Or as close as she dared come to home with those killers after her. She groaned, as the images of her dream reverberated through her head.
She had dreamed of her father. Mark Dayton, late of the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Very damn late. His image had been obscure, hard to see, but that voice . . . never if she lived to be a thousand would she ever forget her father's voice. All those digital family movies her parents had taken when she'd been small would ensure that. He had been reaching out to her, as dark, malignant shapes seemed to close in around her. Men in dark clothes, their eyes alone showing. An oppressive presence that she couldn't quite define. Endless expanses of terrifying emptiness.
And Cylons. She'd seen them, too. The other kind—the "centurions"—their faces dominated by the endless oscillating red eye, their inhuman voices telling her she was going to die. That they were all going to die.
And her father, suddenly there, reaching out to save her, to pull her away from the malevolent forces that sought not only her annihilation, but that of every man, woman and child on Earth. Even though she had only been three years old when her father had gone on that ill-fated mission, never to return, thanks to her mother she still had some tangible memories of Mark Dayton. Yvonne Dayton had sheltered her children from the ensuing chaos, deciding to home school them, in order to let the initial din die down. It had been years later when she'd learned of the despicable conspiracy accusations, and how her mother had actually been held for interrogation and grilled for two solid weeks . . . that whole period blurred into a pleasant two-week stay with her grandparents in Chicago. Weird, she hadn't dreamed about her father much for years, thinking that the trauma of her early childhood was long behind her. But now . . .
But now, it was back, like the slap of an ocean wave. Her dream hadn't just been terrifying, it had been terrifyingly real.Something, something beyond anything she had yet uncovered or imagined, was happening. Something that filled her with utter terror. She picked up her Sat-Phone, to call her sister. She was about to thumb the speed dial, but a sudden powerful impulse made her forebear. It wasn't time for her check-in, anyway, and . . .
She shook her head, and looked in the mirror, knowing she had to get moving again. No place was safe for long. She saw herself, looking haggard and resembling about five miles of bad road. And for a moment, she saw, she saw,another face, next to her own. Tentatively, she reached for the filthy glass . . .
"Dada. . .?"
xxxxx
Far away, in the security section deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, Captain Richard Dickins, USN, awoke to a bright light suffusing his cell. He shielded his eyes, assuming it was just another one of their ploys to make sure he stayed good and sleep deprived, before they started grilling him again. Tensing, he waited for the thick plexiglas door to slide open, and the usual Hazmat-suited goons to come calling. While a little subtler than Torg and Bex, they weren't much better. A half a galaxy apart, the human capacity for cruelty was just as apparent back home. Clamping down on his emotions, he mentally began to retreat to that safe place . . . his haven . . . his desperate connection to sanity . . . He stood at the door, his hand poised over the doorbell as he looked over the garden at the front of the house. The rosemary was in full bloom, and he could smell the aroma of roasting chicken as it wafted through the open windows. Garlic and rosemary would season the bird, and he could almost taste the stuffing, mashed potatoes and Anna's perfect gravy. His mouth began to water at the very thought. Smiling, he rang the doorbell, pausing in trepidation as he waited. Any minute now, Anna would open the door, screaming in surprise and unadulterated joy that he was miraculously still alive. Somehow she never aged in his imagination . . . neither did the kids . . .
"Not now, Dick-Dickins, we need you here."
Like a rag doll, he was jerked back to reality. He leapt off his bunk, shielding his eyes as the aurora faded, revealing a figure. The figure was that of a woman, dressed in blinding white, her wild hair framing her face, as though she had been caught in a windstorm.
"What the . . .? Ama?" His heart thudded against his chest, and he stepped forward, reaching out to her . . . before jerking his hand back, abruptly afraid it was some kind of sick trick. Had they drugged his food again? Was he about to depart on another hallucinogenic trip to Planet Paranoia?
Then she stepped forward, and it didn't matter how quickly he retreated, there was no stopping the Empyrean necromancer. Her hands were suddenly on his temples, and her grey eyes smiled reassuringly at him. Then she tilted her forehead, touching it to his own. Bizarrely, it was as if she had picked him up, and was cradling him in her loving arms. He sighed, his body relaxing, as he slumped against the transparent wall. When was the last time he'd felt anyloving arms enfold him?
"Do not worry, Dick-Dickins," she said. "You have not been forgotten. Your release is not far off."
"How? What do you mean?" He blew out a short breath. "What in Sam Hill are you doing here, Ama?"
"Helping, Dear Heart." She glanced upward momentarily. "I've found that I'm not awfully good at keeping my nose out of things, but they should have realized that going in." Then she grinned at him, and her gapped-tooth smile was like a symbolic beacon of hope. "Your liberation is close. Do not fear."
"But . . ."
"Faith, Dick-Dickins. It will sustain you," she assured him.
Then, with another flash of light, she was gone. He was alone, his cell dark once more. On his bunk in the next cell, Hummer snored quietly, oblivious.
xxxxx
Billions of miles away, in his cabin aboard the Endeavour, Mark Dayton jolted awake. "Mark? Mark!" said Cassie, leaning over him, as he jerked up, sweaty and breathing hard. She startled when he almost butted heads with her.
"Lauren Michelle . . ." he murmured, disoriented for the moment. With barely any sleep the previous night, he had once again nodded off while sitting at his desk, while a weird somnolence had overtaken him. He recalled trying to fight it off, somewhat aware of it, but it had sucked him down, making his eyelids feel heavier than a Battlestar. It was just . . . weird.
"Mark?" she asked again, taking his hand, and noticing it was shaking.
"Uh . . . a dream, Cassiopeia," he replied, enveloping her hand in his own, to mask the trembling, before he kissed it briefly and released it. Straightening up and standing, he worked the kinks out of his back. He could hear his spine crack. "Just another dream."
"A bad one, from the sound of it."
"Yeah," said Dayton, going to the sink, and splashing water on his face.
"Lauren Michelle?" she asked quietly, watching him.
"My daughter. Jessica's younger sister. She was . . . she was in danger."
"Are you sure it was her? I mean, it's been a long time."
"I know, Cassiopeia. I just do. It was Lauren, and she was in danger. Being chased by people with guns. She was reaching out to me, and I couldn't reach her." He ran a hand over his unshaven face, as though he could erase his weariness.
"You think it's real, don't you?" she asked him. "A psychic dream?"
He glanced at her in amazement. She was almost eerily intuitive at times. "Yeah. I know it sounds weird, Cassiopeia. Maybe even kind of hokey, but I do. Somehow, Lauren's in danger, and she reached out to me." He didn't bother to explain how he felt as though he'd been hijacked into this dream, against his will.
Cassie nodded, tentatively laying a hand on his arm. "Are you . . .are you planning to go down to Earth?" she asked him.
Against Adama's orders . . . The words were unspoken, but the message was clear. "Well, I . . ."
Beep.
"Commander Dayton to Control Centre,"said Dorado. "Repeat, Commander Dayton, to Control Centre."
"Dayton. On my way." He looked to her, briefly pressing his lips against hers. "Gotta go."
xxxxx
Ignoring the elevator, the men dressed in dark suits headed up the stairwell of the Buckingham Pavilion Care Home in Chicago, emerging onto the recently renovated Third Floor. Having bypassed the main station this way, they moved quietly along the hallway, without any trouble. As expected, the employees of the private, exclusive, and very expensive extended care facility took the two well-dressed, nondescript men for family members visiting one of the many elderly patients. They smiled innocuously at the nurse passing by, and she gave them a cheery greeting in return. Nobody would ever suspect . . .
They turned down the corridor, their pace slowing as they neared their target. Yvonne Dayton's room. Seventy-nine, thin as a rail, frail, the old broad shouldn't present much of a problem. Taking a final look around, they knocked politely on the door, and, after a few moments, walked in, closing it tightly behind them.
"What the . . ."
"Holy crap!"
"We are so screwed. The Director isn't going to be too happy."
The room was stripped clean, not a single personal possession in sight. It was apparent that Mrs. Dayton's family took better care of the old woman than any of them realized. In the knick of time, they had moved her out.
xxxxx
Sagan's sake, it was almost like looking down on Planet 'P' all over again,as Starbuck and Luana neared the blue and white planet that was home to the Thirteenth Tribe of Man. The difference, of course, being that instead of looking at the planet through the transparent canopy of a Viper, he was in a blacked-out cockpit in a ship designed for stealth, where his helmet's heads-up display interfaced with the Wraith's systems. Oh, and the fact that there seemed to be about two million kilons of space junk littering the low-Earth orbit.
What the frack, it was still exhilarating!
Starbuck opened his mouth, then firmly clamped it shut again. Maintaining communications silence had never been one of his strong suits, but he had given Dayton his word—several times, actually, upon his commanding officer's insistence—and he wasn't about to break it before he even felt Earth's gravitational pull. Not unless he had to, of course. All the same, his sites had been set on Earth for almost two yahrens now, and the emotional impact of finally getting here left him wanting to whoop in joy, or blather incessantly, not dispassionately look over his readouts while altering his course on the flight path that Apollo had assigned him to, as his wife veered off in the opposite direction. He'd rendezvous with Lu in twenty-four centars, and decide whether they had enough data to return to the Endeavour.
Starbuck had refrained from mentioning to the colonel that he'd noticed he was going to be heading nowhere near the infamous Cheyenne Mountain, that particular grid assigned to Lu for some reason. It was enough to give a lesser man a complex, insinuating that they didn't trust him to "keep his nose clean", as Dayton liked to say. It was almost as if Apollo had known about the scheme he'd cooked up with Ryan, where they'd do whatever was humanly possible to get both Hummer and Dickins out of incarceration, and preferably back where they belonged. At this point he was wondering just how in Hades Hole he was going to make that happen, as he settled in to let the Wraith's instruments began recording the reconnaissance data that was already flashing across his screens . . .
Beep!
A ship was on his scanner, leaving Earth and settling into orbit in the thermosphere. Sensors designated her as a transport vessel of some sort, unarmed from the looks of her. "WASA" was stamped across her fuselage, and he recognized the Earth letters from some doodling Ryan had done. As he examined the specs the computer was spitting out, it appeared that Earth shuttles had improved markedly since Dayton and his crew had launched in 2010. After all, this one had some crude electronic countermeasures, a fairly respectable scanner from what he was detecting, as well as greater speed. Then again, from what Ryan had told him, Earthlings had focussed a great deal of energy and money on intraplanetary wars. It would follow that ECM would be crucial in the evolution of their space ships. With a flick of a switch, he adjusted his sensors, frowning at the image of several other ships it had left behind, likely limited to planetary atmospheric flying. Kind of strange that they had needed an escort . . . He adjusted the controls as he picked up a signal coming from the Earth shuttle's comm system. Voices came over his headset and it took him a few microns before his ear could discern between the often incoherent babble that he recognized as Earthspeak, and what was filtered through his languaphone.
"Guiana, this is Venture. By the skin of our teeth, we're away."
"Did you take any hits, Carter?"
"Negative. Typically, they were more intimidating than deadly. Besides, we outran them. Left 'em practically standing still, the poor sods! It'll be a cold day in hell when an F-35 outruns a Guardian."
"That's the me talk to Dayton."
"Stand by. I'll put her on."
Starbuck drew in a deep breath, almost not believing his ears. Dayton? Could it possibly be that easy? The Starbuck Luck was still with him, after all. Not only had he apparently stumbled upon a WASA shuttle, but from what he had heard, Commander Mark Dayton's daughter might very well be aboard. His heart thudded against his chest in excitement. Lords, if Dayton could only be here . . .
"Any word, Hayashi?"a female voice asked. Even through the Languatron, it was a husky, smoky kind of female voice, pleasing to the ear.
"None, Jess. But don't dismay. You know your sister. She's been in tighter spots than this."
Starbuck altered course, shadowing the Earth shuttle from a distance as he listened in on the conversation. Sagan, it was so damned tempting to just cut communications silence, and announce that he was there. Yeah sure, Dayton had told him not to betray his presence, but surely the man would feel different if he knew it was his own daughter out there. Not only that . . . but Starbuck was getting the idea that her sister was in some kind of trouble, from the tone of Jess' voice.
His instinct was telling him to just do it. Hadn't Ama told him more than once that he should follow his instincts? But did that include disobeying a direct order? And for what? To let a forty-eight year old Earth woman know that her father wasn't dead after all? Would that justify his transgression? Even in his own mind?
"Dayton, there's more. We just received a signal from one of those probes we launched to keep an eye on our star system . .."
Beep!
"Oh, frack!"
And his mind was made up.