Chapter Five
As he listened to Dayton's daughter in the Venture surrender to the Russian task force, Starbuck was beginning to get the idea that maybe Earth wasn't exactly the shining beacon of brotherhood that they'd all been hoping for. His life support systems dropped another two percent as the fighters intercepted them. Struggling with his ship to send off an encoded short-burst transmission, he didn't much care if it was Apollo, Luana or the Endeavour who picked it up. He was obviously in over his head and needed some help. Again, the Wraith's systems stubbornly denied him.
"Major Sharova, I briefly picked up signal that I can't identify, but I can still not locate the second craft on radar. It's like cow licked it away."
Starbuck put a hand to his languaphone, certain he must have heard at least part of that wrong. Either that or he should be scanning for flying bovines.
"Acknowledged, Lieutenant. Enemy craft, identify," came a brisk order over the comm.
It was worth noting that they used "enemy" and not "unidentified". It could be they were lumping him in with WASA, who they obviously weren't on the friendliest terms with, or they had decided he was a separate threat. Even at sixty percent, the Wraith's countermeasures were still confounding them in the dense cloud cover. It would have been amusing to continue to watch them scramble to try and physically find him, if the inevitability factor of him ending up in their custody didn't enter into the equation.
"This is Strike Captain Starbuck of the Colonial Nation," he replied, nodding as he remembered Ryan's coaching on Earth protocol. "We come in peace. We mean you no harm."
"What is . . . Colonial Nation? And Starbucks . . . is this American joke?" the voice returned after a long moment. "Very funny. Ha ha. I blow up from laughter."
"Starbuck, it's a . . . a name!" he breathed in frustration. Why did everybody from Proteus to Earth have trouble with that? "We're from another . . . star system light-years away from your own," he tried to explain. "We've come to help defend you against a Cylon attack."
"What is this . . .Cylon?" the same voice demanded, even brisker.
"Major Sharova, this is Director Dayton from WASA. The Cylons piloted the alien fighters that fired on us in orbit," Jess inserted from the Venture. "There is the space equivalent of an aircraft carrier filled with Cylons out there somewhere that's preparing for an Earth attack! If your intelligence satellites picked up Strike Captain Starbuck saving our butts and repelling their attack, then General Surkov already has an idea of what I'm talking about. God knows I've tried to convince both your military and your government of it for years!"
"I don't need your valuable directives, Director Dayton," the Russian Major replied. "Strike Captain . . . Starbucks . . . or whatever your name is . . . I order you to . . . uncloak. See. I too can be funny."
"Uncloak?" Starbuck repeated, shaking his head at the reluctant mental image. He arrives on Earth, naked. Possibly the secondworst way to make a first impression, right behind blasting the Russian task force with his Dynamo. "Hey, that's getting a little personal, don't you think? I mean shouldn't we at least become friends, first?" And then as an afterthought: "Besides, I'm . . . uh . . ." He racked his brain for the Earthspeak word. "Uh . . . wedlocked."
"It means disable your countermeasures, Starbuck," Jess clarified, with a hint of a chuckle in her voice. "Whatever your ship has that prevents us from scanning it. It's blocking their equipment, as well."
Starbuck sighed, accessing the system. Suddenly, he did feel naked. "Affirmative. Got it." Mentally, he could picture them dissecting his Wraith with their more limited equipment, and tried to imagine what they would glean from an Espridian ship that was more sophisticated than even current Cylon or Colonial technology. He reached over and shut off the ship's ECM suite, then squirmed in his seat as he waited for them to close in, to target him with their weapons.
"Obaldet!" the Russian finally murmured over the line, almost reverently.
Then they did close in.
xxxxx
Quickly, Apollo's team moved through the Mars base, feeling their way through and checking any compartments or rooms that they passed by, looking for survivors. The lighting, while effective, was dim. Red panels, set into the walls, flashing slowly, leading Apollo to deduce that whatever auxiliary power systems they used had been activated after the accident. From the looks of the equipment outside the base, he'd guess the backup was either the solar arrays or wind turbines.
By Colonial comparison, the place was a maze. Apollo couldn't adequately express his relief when they came across some kind of operations station. He pressed his palm to the scan plate and the door obediently opened. They looked around, scanning, and quickly located a base schematic with a multi-station tactile user interface suspended in the middle of the room. While the system was alien to him, it had a certain logic that impressed him as he tapped on transparent screens and watched the indicated area suddenly magnify. A micron later, it spit out possibly relevant and important data that was, unfortunately, in Earthspeak. It seemed the data could be accessed from each station, making it more user friendly. Yeah, it would be brilliant if he could understand it.
Luckily, about then Dayton and the rest caught up.
"Where are we at?" Dayton asked, entering the room. He let out a low whistle as he looked around. "Hey, not too shabby."
"Stuff we only dreamed of, Mark," said Baker. "Imagine if those slackers hadn't wasted so many years."
"Oh yeah," nodded Dayton, studying the layout of the control stations. "Windows 2045. The more things change, the more they stay the same."
"You understand it?" Jolly asked, his brow furrowed in concentration.
"Well, let's just say I'm not as lost as I was afraid I'd be," Dayton smiled wryly, before glancing at the colonel. "By the way, we noticed a storage locker near the airlock. According to the data Malus hacked from the Base's computer, it usually holds space suits and survival gear. It was empty."
"Maybe so, but so far, we've found no survivors, Commander," Apollo replied, before indicating the structural map. "It's some kind of graphic layout of the base. I understand the concept, but I can't make heads or astrums of it."
"Ooh, very James Bond," Ryan inserted, sounding awed, while doing his best Sean Connery impression. "You'd think by now it would be voice-activated three-dimensional holographics."
Baker chuckled. "Yeah, you can tell they're not government-funded anymore. No goodies from Q."
"Disappointed?" Dayton asked, heading over to a centralized station with several monitors on the walls. All dark, he began going through the process of reinitialising the system. Some screens came to life, some stubbornly ignored his prompting.
"Maybe a little," Ryan replied, letting his fingers do the walking. "Okay, a lot. I mean hey, I wanted transporters. 'Beam me up, Scotty', and all that cool, futuristic sci-fi stuff. Now where's the main reactor?"
"I'll race ya," Baker moved to the opposite side to help, while images and screens changed at a furious pace. "Come to Papa."
Malus looked at Apollo, his posture indicating confusion. Apollo shrugged back.
"Check to see if there's any kind of nuclear or other emergency shelter on the base, just in case they were planning ahead . . . Papa," Dayton instructed.
"I'm on it, Sonny," Baker rejoined from the graphic blueprint. "Mal, how about you upload all this. I don't fancy taking it with me."
Dayton smirked at the remark as the screens came on line. The images were total snow at the main reactor, surveillance probably blown out by the blast. A few screens later he saw the first signs of the carnage. Three bodies in a dimly-lit corridor. Poor devils who had somehow made it through the blast doors before they closed, horribly burned, maimed . . . the walls blackened from the smoke, fittings warped by the heat. He sucked in a breath between his teeth, holding it for a moment. There was no way that anybody could be alive down there . . . but they'd have to make sure, if only for conscience's sake.
"Lords," Apollo murmured, falling in beside Dayton. "Can we get a reading on radion levels?"
"Here," said Ryan, at another station. It was the plan of the base, the reactor area highlighted in flashing red. Several areas were likewise highlighted, the intensity of the red diminishing concomitant to the distance from the source.
"Looks deadly," said Apollo.
"It is. From what data is coming in, it looks like the radiation level inside the reactor room is at well over a thousand rads per hour."
"I take it that's bad?" asked Apollo, unfamiliar with the Earth measurements.
"Cook your bacon in nothing flat. Real crispy."
"Any clue as to what happened?" asked Dayton.
"The engineering log is still open, so . . . yeah. Looks like a valve jammed in the reactor cooling system. They couldn't free it in time. The pressure and heat built up until the system ruptured violently, trashing the reactor room and damaging the control systems."
"Wait a cotton pickin' minute . . . shouldn't the blast doors have closed?" Baker asked.
"You'd think so," Ryan murmured, looking through the log. His finger traced the words, making everybody realize the hippie-beach bum was obviously a speed reader. "But for some reason they didn't . . . Lord, thunderin' Jaysus . . ." He shook his head in dismay. "They had to manually close the damned doors! They malfunctioned!"
"Malfunctioned?" Dayton echoed in disbelief. "What the hell . . .?"
Ryan found a video file and replayed it. It showed the main power room, red lights flashing, klaxons blaring, and the crew scrambling to get the blast doors closed. Each passing centon seemed tortuous as brave men and women toiled to save the rest of the base from irradiation at the risk of their own lives. Finally, the main anti-radiation doors started sliding closed. People were screaming in panic, scurrying to get out, when the whole unit seemed to blow apart. The picture went dead. "Holy crap. Those guys . . ."
"The whole place must be saturated," said Apollo.
"Yeah, but large areas have been sealed off, Apollo," said Ryan. "Blast doors shut and vented to the surface. About . . . thirty percent of the base still seems habitable."
"Can we check for life signs?" asked Lia.
"Perhaps I could be of some assistance, gentlemen?" Malus asked.
"Mal, sometimes you ruin all the fun." Baker frowned, redoubling his efforts at the console.
"Would it not be advantageous to accelerate . . .?" the IL queried.
"Lia's on the right track," Dayton inserted. "See if you can check for life signs, Mal. Are any of these poor souls still alive?"
"Got it!" Ryan exclaimed triumphantly. "The main reactor is on Sub-Level Three, Section Eight." He looked through the transparent board to Baker. "Bob?"
"There's a fallout shelter too . . ." Baker paused as an indicator flashed. He punched the screen with his index finger, watching the display. "In the basement. Sub-Level Four, accessed through a short tunnel and about as far from the reactor as possible. But . . . " Once again he deviated, researching another warning indicator as they all waited anxiously "The tunnel is collapsed."
Jolly groaned aloud.
"I would theorize that vibrations caused by the explosion in the reactor area weakened a fissure in the rock," Malus offered. "There are no life signs registering from within."
"I wonder how many were in the tunnel?" Lia whispered.
"Maybe it collapsed before they even tried to make it to the shelter." Jolly touched Lia's hand lightly in support and she gave him a weak smile.
Baker frowned. "Hey, hold the phone, folks. Something's going on . . .this is kinda weird."
"What?" Apollo asked.
"An airlock just opened on the opposite end of Sub-Level Four. Somebody just left the base."