Chapter Four
"This is Lieutenant Colonel Baker to Barstow Station Mars Base, come in!" Baker requested on the communicator from the flight deck of their Cylon shuttlecraft, as they drew closer to the Mars settlement. Like their fighters, it had three seats—two forward, with a third behind for the command centurion. It was narrower and lined with seats for transporting troops from orbit to ground missions. He glanced at Jolly and Lia, quirking his eyebrows in confusion at the lack of response from the base. Hell, if it was him down there—figuring on help being months away, instead of hours—he'd be screaming with amazement and kicking up his heels in delight! "Lieutenant Colonel Baker to Barstow Station Mars Base, come in! The cavalry has arrived, Barstow!"
"I'm not picking up any human life signs," Jolly reported, eyes fixed on the scanner. "But there is a very high radion reading near the base coordinates." He pointed to a flashing dot on the screen. "It sure looks like a reactor breach."
With a frown and a concerned shake of his head, Baker called back to Dayton, "Mark! They're not responding. Not only that, but Jolly's not scanning anybody down there . . . Maybe we're too late."
"That's impossible!" Dayton averred, stepping forward. "Cassie, how long until death from radiation poisoning?"
"Depends on the severity, but it could be days," she replied.
"Then this doesn't make any sense!" Dayton retorted.
"Maybe. . ." Lia hesitated. Out the ports she could see the planet's surface drawing closer, the first indications of a thickening atmosphere visible around its edge.
"Speak up, Ensign," Dayton told her. "There are no wallflowers on this team."
"Yes, sir," she replied, more confident. "Well, I heard that their probe scanned us. Maybe they left. We do appear to be Cylon, after all"
"No . . ." Dayton shook his head, putting himself in their place. "If I was in their shoes, and my main reactor had failed and I couldn't fix it, Survival 101 would dictate that even Cylons would look good." He glanced at Paddy who had joined them.
"Live to fight another day." Ryan nodded his agreement. "Besides, we've had the whole planet under surveillance since we entered orbit. Nothing has launched from the surface. Zipola."
"I didn't necessarily mean they launched,"Lia corrected them."It's a big planet."
"Right. They had to have gone somewhere, for some reason," Dayton theorized."Get Apollo's patrol to scan the area to rule out a surface evacuation. They couldn't have gone too far since we picked up their distress signal. Upload their scans to us here, as well as the Endeavour."
"Aye, Commander."
"What's happening, Carter?" Jess asked tersely, even as she personally looked over his shoulder at the control panel. The attack had ceased and the three Cylon ships now seemed to be adrift, apparently all systems down. Even their radio transmissions had ceased. She clenched her trembling hands into tight fists, willing her body to at least act like the WASA director she was supposed to be.
"That other ship hit them with . . . something," Carter murmured, hurriedly trying to locate their supposed saviour on his scanners. A fleeting signal lit up his screen before it disappeared once again. "I don't know what. It's knocked out their power, communications, weapons—thank God for that— everything. Goddamn," he said excitedly, "I want to get me one of those! Those Cylons are sitting ducks!"
"And us without our shotguns," Jess replied nervously, feeling the hair at the back of her neck stand up. She didn't like not being able to "see" this other ship. As much as she appreciated the rescue, it would be far more heroic at this point if their would-be rescuer could introduce himself . . . herself . . . itself . . . at least, as far as she was concerned.
"What's our status, Alan?" she asked.
"Well . . . our main communications are out. Engines are down. No power to the plasma induction coils." He flipped through more breakers and switches. "I think we can get moving again with our backup thrusters, but I've got no reading on fuel."
"Maybe I shouldn't have asked," grumbled Jess. She suddenly recalled her grandmother who had often said 'If life hands you a lemon, make lemonade!' Right now, she'd rather a Scotch.
Straight up.
"Main computer isn't responding," Carter went on. "Scanners . . . intermittent. Damn." The scope flickered out, came back, then died again. "Our life-support is still going, but one of our battery bank relays has shorted out. We're draining power pretty fast." The temperature in the cabin had already dropped a few degrees.
"How long?"
"We'll be totally without electrical power in . . . four hours, six minutes, unless I can do an emergency restart of engines."
"Solar cells?"
"Same song, second verse. The main relay is toast. So is the primary bus. Hey, at least we still have grav plating." He spewed a few colourful metaphors. "I might be able to reroute, in a while. If the rest of the circuit is intact."
"If we have anything to reroute to," she groused, watching him open the cover plate on his control panel. Inside was a total spaghetti of wires and circuit boards. He at once set to work, swearing as he went.
"Well, whoever it is isn't shooting at us. I'll take that as a plus, Jess." Carter got up, and headed aft, opening the small storage locker that held both tools and spare parts.
"But where is he? Why can't we detect him?"
"I'd say whoever it is has ECM of the likes that we've never seen before," Carter theorized, getting back into his seat and reaching over to adjust his scanner on the coordinates where he'd picked up the . . . Beep! He adjusted something and the unit stayed on. For now. "There it is!" And then: "It's gone again! It's like trying to get a lock on running water!"
"Let's try using the low-gain array to contact him," Jess suggested, shrugging when Carter looked at her in disbelief. "What have we got to lose?"
"Not a lot," Carter nodded, handing her a headset. "Go ahead."
"Alien ship, this is Jess Dayton, Director of the World Aeronautics and Space Agency, aboard the Earth shuttle, Venture. Come in." She paused, static filling her ears. "I repeat: Alien ship, this is Jess Dayton on the Earth shuttle, Venture. Come in, please."
"This . . . guy . . . whatever . . . probably doesn't even understand English," Carter guessed.
Seconds seemed to stretch on endlessly as Carter made adjustments before their radio crackled to life.
"I read you,Venture. This is Strike Captain Starbuck of the Covert Operations Ship,Endeavour, representing the Colonial Nation." Abruptly relieved, she realized he was human. After a career of pigeon-holing people from their accents, she found that his accent was actually pleasing to her ear. If she wasn't mistaken, though a little stilted, it sounded almost . . . Canadian? Possibly Alberta border? Or maybe just a little south of that border . . . But with a touch of something else . . . She nodded at Carter as he once again tried to pick the ship up on scanner. The line crackled and hissed."Do you copy,Venture?"
Then it abruptly occurred to her: "Endeavour?" Jess gasped aloud, her heart pounding in her chest as that one word stood out amongst the others. Oh, she knew about the Colonials from the Guardians, but for him to come from the Endeavour . . . but what was it he'd said . . . a Covert Operations Ship? Could it be a coincidence? Or more likely some cruel twist of fate? Or a joke?
"Yes, theEndeavour. Named for the NASA Space ShuttleEndeavour. . . which I believe. . ." he seemed to be searching for the words, giving Jess the impression that English was not the speaker's lingua mater. "Uh . . . landed, and then had her two man crew of Captain Richard Dickins and Technician Humuhumunukunukuapua'a . . ."
The transmission suddenly sounded like some kind of tribal chant.
"You're breaking up, Strike Captain," Jess leaned forward, concentrating, not wanting to miss a single word about Richard Dickins, once her father's closest and most valued friend. Lauren had recently confirmed that the old Enterprise-class space shuttle had indeed landed after over a four decade-long absence, but to find out that "Dick" Dickins had survived. Where in God's name had they been all this time? Could her father . . .?
"No, I'm not," drawled the man in apparent amusement. "That's really his name."
She couldn't help but smile at his comedic timing. He had a way of putting her at ease . . . which immediately made her more suspicious, when she realized it. He had said he represented the Colonial Nation, and the sophistication of his ship should have verified that . . . but there was a small part of her that—as much as it was difficult to admit—never actually expected them to show up. And the same went for the Cylons. It probably went along with twenty-odd years of being labelled a conspiracy theorist, a nut job, a religious whacko, a dope-head, the works. Despite meeting with the representative for the Guardians and being shown all the evidence, during the tough times, a gal got to a certain point where she began to doubt the accuracy of it all herself. She sighed. Yeah, and if the rest of her people suspected that, she'd be marched in front of them and have her WASA insignia dramatically ripped from her jersey. "Oh. Sorry."
"So were we all. That's why we called him 'Hummer', instead. And call me Starbuck." He paused, and she was certain she could hear sparking in the background, as though something was short-circuiting.
"Alright, Starbucks," she replied, tentatively, sharing a surprised look with Carter. "Call me 'Jess'."
"I'd be honoured to, Jess. And it's just 'Starbuck'. I'm one of a kind. Anyhow, the way we understand it, Dickins and Hummer were incarcerated by the American government in some secure base called Cheyenne Mountain . . ."
"Bastards!" It slipped out.
"Yeah," Starbuck replied. "It wasn't too popular with us either. But more critically at the moment, there's a Cylon Base Ship in the vicinity. Now, if the patrol we just tangled with is any indication, then I'm guessing she's closer than any of us actually realized."
"We . . ." Jess paused, collecting her thoughts. "We may have picked her up on satellite, Starbuck," she confided carefully as Carter looked at her sharply. She shook her head at him, still not ready to put all her eggs in one basket.
Carter rolled his eyes at her and then reached inside the panel and clicked a fresh circuit board into place. He pressed a switch. The lights dimmed almost to nothing, then, snapping another bank of switches, he was rewarded with a thump from somewhere aft. He gave her the thumbs up. "Engines coming back on-line, Jess. Flow sensor says we've got a cycle. Plasma pressure building. Power conversion curve looks good. We have power for all systems and landing."
"Computer?"
"Rebooting now. I think we're gonna make it."
"Good work, Carter." She patted his shoulder, before returning her attention to Starbuck.
"Jess, tell me where the Base Ship is now and I'll send a . . ." She didn't understand the short phrase that followed, deciding he didn't know the English equivalent for it. ". . . to theEndeavourso we can . . . pit capital ship against capital ship. Believe me, you don't want to get in the middle of this." His English was remarkably good.
"Sounds like we're already in the middle of it, Starbuck," she replied evenly, noting that his Endeavour was obviously a match for the Cylon Base Ship. "Tell you what. Come with us to our Space Centre in Kazakhstan and we'll exchange intelligence. I just received some intel on the Endeavour. The NASA shuttle with your man aboard, I mean. I repeat, follow us down. We need to establish some trust . . ."
"And saving your astrums from the Cylons just now didn't do that . . ." he broke off the accusation, the disbelief in his tone clear. He seemed to be a master of "outraged indignation". Once again, she could hear sparking over the frequency. "Not sure what I could do to top that. .." And sarcasm.
"Look, Strik . . .uh, Starbuck, maybe you're accustomed to beings from other planets suddenly showing up, but for us this takes a bit of getting used to. You've dropped a bomb, to say the least. Seeing who you are, what you are . . . would cinch it for me, Strike Captain," she explained in what she hoped was a slightly conciliatory tone of voice. She didn't exactly want him as a prisoner . . . but he would make fine collateral, knowing that somewhere out there in their star system was another war ship capable of taking on the one she'd seen near Deimos. "Besides, I have an IL-class Cylon named Lucifer that's been spinning me a yarn for nigh on two months . . ."
"Lucifer?" he gasped. "Holy Lords of Kobol! Whatever you do, don't trust him!"
"You know of him?" she asked in surprise.
"Know of him? I taught him to play cards," the other replied cockily.
"Are you for real?" she sputtered.
"As real as your father, Mark Dayton. Commander of the Colonial Covert Operations Ship,Endeavour.Who just happens to be my commanding officer."
"My father . . .how could . . ." Her chest hitched as a tidal wave of emotions hit her full force. All her life she had believed he was dead . . . That theEndeavour had gone up with the International Space Station in 2010. Now what she had taken mostly for fact for the last forty years was falling apart! It couldn't be . . . he couldn't be alive . . . And if he was, then what in hellhad he been doing all this time?
"Give me the coordinates, Jess, and then I'll follow you down. I'll bring you up to date on your father," Starbuck persuaded her. "You have my word as a Colonial Warrior."
"If I knew exactly what that was, I might be more . . .agreeable," she muttered to Carter, feeling completely overwhelmed. The truth was that after a lifetime of lies, recriminations, and . . . well, lies, that even though she was dying to hear about her father, she didn't grant trust easily, especially to strangers. Even though the Guardians had foretold the arrival of a cybernetic killer race called Cylons and had helped WASA enlist the Colonials' assistance, somehow the sudden reappearance of her father into the picture was like a curveball arriving from the stands. Straight into the side of her head.
"Yeah," Carter agreed, moving to position the shuttle for re-entry. He spotted the inert Cylon fighters as he did so. They were beginning to drift away from their position. "What about the Cylons?"
Jess asked the question.
"If they don't burn up on re-entry, our guys will pick them off when they get here," Starbuck replied. "Whatever happens first."
Carter nodded, apparently satisfied. "Strike Captain, we are now in re-entry mode. Do you copy?"
"Affirmative." There was a brief silence. "Awaiting coordinates of Cylon Base Ship, Venture." Not very patiently, by the sound of his voice.
"Stubborn bugger, isn't he?" Jess murmured. The fact was that Earth was in danger and they were woefully ill-prepared for a Cylon attack. As intimidating as it was calling on this theoretical war ship and putting her trust in this unknown man, it was their only chance at defence for her beloved home, which loomed so beautifully before them, like a precious gem. "Alright, Starbuck. But I have your word of honour that you're coming with us?" she confirmed.
"Hey, have I ever lied to you?"
Wise guy. "Transmit coordinates, Carter." She waited a few moments. "Are you receiving, Starbuck?"
"I am . . ." Then he groaned aloud. "Oh, frack!"
"Repeat, Starbuck. I didn't quite copy that last transmission."