Chapter Ten
Surkov burst into the Baikonur Control Centre, barking rapidly into his sat-phone, while keeping one hand almost possessively on the arm of a man whom Jess assumed had to be Starbuck. The Colonial Warrior was dressed in a dishevelled isolation suit, the top half undone and his feet conspicuously bare. His dark blond hair, surprisingly long for an officer, was damp and his face was flushed. He was looking around with curiosity, craning his neck to see some of the control stations manned by WASA staff and Russian military alike. Besides the ruddiness to his complexion, she also noticed some discoloration which looked like bruising. Despite her warnings to fully cooperate with his captors, he had obviously been manhandled during decontamination.
He caught her eye, perhaps sensing her scrutiny. His eyes opened wide in apparent surprise, as if he recognized her. Then he smiled widely, brushing off Surkov's grip as easily as if the colonel general was a child, and strode towards her. The smile was infectious, and she felt herself responding in kind as she stuck out her hand in greeting.
"Jess Dayton," she said. "You're obviously Starbuck."
"Sweet lady, Mark Dayton is like another father to me. I'm not going to shake your hand!" he grinned, spontaneously wrapping his arms around her and picking her up, whooping in joy before swinging her around in a circle. He laughed aloud as he set her down again, his hands resting on her slender waist. "Sagan's sake, I can't wait to get you two together!"
It was the closest link she'd had to Mark Dayton since kissing him goodbye forty-four years earlier. Starbuck's exuberance was clearly born from an honest-to-goodness excitement of what this would mean to his friend, her father. It was like a breath of fresh air in an environment that generally stunk, surrounded as she was by Russian officers intruding in her Control Centre. Her resulting elation was indescribable as he beamed at her, his blue eyes sparkling with unadulterated happiness for a friend. A giggle escaped her and she smothered it with a hand, horrified that "giggle" and "Jess Dayton, Director of WASA" could be in any way connected. Still, she couldn't help grinning inanely back at the spaceman.
"How on Earth did you recognize me?" she asked, taking a deep breath, lightly resting her hands on his arms.
"Well . . ."
A harsh cough erupted from him and he whirled away from her. His lithe frame actually shook with the intensity of the attack. Starbuck wrapped a hand around one side of his chest, favouring his ribs. A moment later, he was catching his breath and shaking it off as if it was of no consequence. He turned back to her. "Sorry. Something I picked up in decon. I got so clean, something decided to take up housekeeping." He wiped a sleeve across his face, mopping up a fine sheen of sweat. He really didn't look well. "Anyhow, a while back I saw a holo-vid you did when you were the Executive Director for WASA. It was your message to us about the Guardians and how Earth needed help," he clarified. "It's a long story, and I'm guessing we don't have time for it right now." He glanced back at Surkov who was finally putting away his phone. "Besides, your father should be the one to tell it to you. Jess, I know this is a strange question, but how long have I been here? I've sort of lost track of time."
"Roughly five hours. It's just after midnight, Kazakhstan time. July 3rd."
He frowned. "Any chance I could get my chrono back? My gear?"
"Chrono? Time piece?"
"Yeah. Maybe my clothes too," he looked down at his bare feet, "my boots . . ."
"I'll see what I can do," she replied, without much hope. "But I suspect they burned them."
"We were in time, Captain," Surkov told the warrior, interrupting without finesse. "I owe you my gratitude."
"For what?" Jess asked.
"We curtailed an assassination attempt on President Kuzmin," Surkov told her. "I am still uncertain how Captain Starbuck knew the details, but the GRU agents he identified were just arrested, literally within metres of their target." He spared a brief look at Starbuck. "I will beat it out of him later."
Starbuck raised an eyebrow at the man, clearly unsure how to interpret that.
Surkov chuckled, swatting the warrior heartily in the arm, before returning his attention to Jess. "Borodin was planning a coupe, Jessica. He is already in custody, as is the Cylon which appears to have its circuitry blown." He nodded at Starbuck in apparent deference this time, a marginal improvement on threatening to beat him, and a sure sign the two would be drinking vodka in the not so distant future. "President Kuzmin is contacting the American president to discuss raising the level of defence readiness worldwide. The Americans are taking a long time, as you say, to saddle up."
"We may take a long time to saddle up, but once we're up, we go like stink," Jess replied, throwing an old Russian proverb back at him.
Surkov smiled.
"Orlov!" Sadowski called as he looked over his console. "The last Cylon fighter . . . we just picked it up on our satellite. It's entering our atmosphere!"
xxxxx
Grae hadn't seriously thought of bullying as a positive character trait until now. It had usually backfired as a kid, more often than not leaving him with a bloody nose or split lip for his efforts, thus he'd fallen back on the loud-mouthed bravado with a touch of wry wit to get him through life. It was, therefore, a perverse pleasure to see General Roach muscle his way into Area 51, the four-star general bullying the soldiers stationed there and threatening to bust them down so far that they'd need a F-22 to get them back up. In the end they had achieved the impossible . . . or certainly the improbable. Finally, one of the most controversial and well kept secrets of the twentieth century was about to be busted open.
He hoped.
"Area 51" sat on a sprawling, long-dried lake bed in the Nevada desert with many parts of it going deep underground. The designation dated back to the 1950s, when the old Atomic Energy Commission maps had the military ranges in the region. This was where early nuclear weapons had been designed and tested, and then broken up into "Areas", "Area 1", "Area 2" and so forth. While those maps, along with the AEC, were long defunct, somehow the designation had clung to this place.
Much like the mystery and controversy.
Once inside, they had been driven into a hangar and then escorted through a set of massive steel blast doors, not unlike those at Cheyenne Mountain. Huge elevators took them down, level after level, deeper into areas so secret, scarcely a handful of people on the whole planet knew what they actually contained. After checking in with yet another security post, the party went down a long tunnel and up to another set of sealed doors. There had been another delay as it became apparent that nobody had the access code to get them past the massive doors that looked as though they could withstand a nuclear attack . . . but not that of General Roach. The four-star general disappeared with the base commander and Colonel Bradshaw, leaving the rest of them in the company of scowling soldiers.
Thirty minutes later the brass reappeared, the attending guards were ordered to wait down the corridor, and the massive doors were opened. It was another hangar, but somewhat smaller than the rest they had seen. The dust hung thickly in the cold, stale air. Truthfully, it looked more like a crypt than a storage area. On a platform at the far end, surrounded by a catwalk and under racks of work lights, sat the object of so much speculation. Both Hummer and Dickins gasped slightly. What lay before them was unquestionably Cylon in origin. A state-of-the-art, frontline fighter craft.
Or, what was left of it.
As they drew closer, they could see that the front canopy was buckled inwards and torn open, as if it had slammed hard into something. One engine pod was missing, the other badly banged up. One wing was bent, the laser gun missing, and what they could see of the underside was gouged and scraped. Obviously, the ship had taken massive damage coming in. That it still remained in one piece was a semi-miracle. On another platform nearby sat the detached engine, surrounded by lights and instruments. On a third rested the flight crew. All of them were covered in a thick layer of dust. It had been a long time since anyone had entered the hangar.
"It's a Cylon Raider," Hummer announced after only a few moments of examining the wreckage in the enormous underground hangar. Somehow, Colonel Bradshaw had had the presence of mind to get his hands on the translator device that Dickins called a "languatron". The electronic marvel had been taken off Dickins and Hummer when they had first landed on US soil. In hindsight, it might have saved a lot of frustration if scientists hadn't taken it apart to see how it worked, only to end up breaking it. However, it hadn't taken long for Hummer to get it functioning again, so now they could actually communicate with the native Colonial.
"The same class of Raiders that the Colonials are currently up against," Dickins further translated the translation. "Kinda weird, considering this bird crashed over a hundred years ago."
"They were obviously flying something different then," Roach clarified. A hundred years was a long time to not update your fighter craft. Any government administration had to be a special kind of stupid to let that happen.
"Yes, they were flying an earlier model, and there have been quite a few technological upgrades since then," Dickins nodded. "Range and weaponry."
"Unreal. It was all true," Grae Ryan murmured to General Roach as he stood in absolute astonishment, gaping at the remains of a Cylon Raider and its crew of three Cylons laid out on a long bench, all of them identical to those pulled out of the wreckage of the Raider they had found on the moon. Hummer had moved to examine the damaged centurions, peering into their crania and tracing circuit lines with his finger. One was ripped open, seemingly impaled by something, another badly dented, doubtless by the force of the crash. The third was scorched and torn, as if by an explosion.
"These centurions are the same model as Baltar's pilots," announced Hummer, to Dickins. "Identical to ones we have aboard the Galactica. They cannot be over a century old!"
"But they are, at least here on Earth," muttered Ryan, turning in a circle to take in the hangar. "Hell, didn't I see this in Indiana Jones?"
"Indiana Jones?" Roach asked, shaking his head slowly.
"Yeah. The old adventure series."
"Never saw it."
"You don't like old movies, General?"
"Worthwhile ones. In fact, I have quite a collection."
"Like?"
"How to Strangle an Astronaut Who Won't Shut His Festering Gob," Roach replied. "That's one of my favourites."
"Never saw that one," Ryan replied with a smirk.
"I'm guessing you don't want to star in it either," Roach returned, starting to look through equipment that had been dismantled. "What are we looking for, Ryan?"
"You look for any documentation that actually records what they've concluded. The scientists who went through this, I mean. We'll look for the electronic data to back it up. Essentially, we're looking for the equivalent of a black box. A flight data recorder, like what we have in our fighters or civilian airliners carry," he explained, for Hummer's benefit. The Colonial nodded. "Something that tells the story of how they crashed and how they got here."
"I thought that all we needed was enough physical evidence to prove that someone was covering up the existence of known Cylons, even after WASA warned them of an impending threat," Colonel Bradshaw said, waving a hand around at the abundance of said evidence.
"And we have that," Grae nodded. "But I still want to know what a lone Cylon Raider of a series that shouldn't have even existed in 1947 is doing here, along with her flight crew. And why this was kept classified so long. On whose orders."
"Follow the trail to who was behind this and see if there is a link between then and now," Roach nodded.
"Exactly."
"Then let's get to work."
"Good idea, sir. Let's do that."
xxxxx
Mark Dayton felt—as the saying went—small and insignificant, standing among enormous megaliths and tumbled columns while gazing up at a pyramid that would have stretched towards the heavens, if it hadn't been buried beneath so much rock and sand that it had laid forgotten for millennia under a partially fractured condensed tylinium dome. Therefore, it was a strange sensation to then enter the comparatively claustrophobic passageways of the pyramid, especially with everybody in both parties in tow.
According to Curtis, the members of the station who were suffering from radiation sickness were inside the pyramid. Cassie was eager to do whatever she could, but had already voiced her concerns that it wouldn't be much while the astronauts were still in their spacesuits. It was quickly clarified that within the pyramid was a functional airlock and a sustainable environment. It had become their refuge when their reactor failed.
The acting commander of Barstow Station had also given them a quick rundown of the events surrounding the reactor breach, as he understood them. Curtis seemed to have no idea that sabotage was behind the deaths of so many of their people. For the moment, it didn't make much sense to share the intelligence, especially when they were on a shared frequency. A brief look from Apollo told Dayton that his executive officer agreed. Besides, for all Dayton knew the saboteur could be dead. In the meantime, the Colonial Warriors would remain alert, keeping in mind that one of the Earthmen ten feet in front of them could be a murderous traitor.
"Cozy," Baker murmured as a series of newly erected lights lit their way through the shadows. "Where's Brendan Fraser when you really need him?"
"Mummy," whimpered Ryan.
"Bury it, you two," added Dayton.
"Sorry, Chief. Didn't mean to get wrapped up in the moment," said Ryan, deadpan.
"One day I hope to understand what you Earthmen are talking about without asking for the inevitable explanation," Malus said.
"As do I," Apollo added, shining his illuminator all around him, looking for any signs of danger. Briefly, Baltar's words in a far-away crypt on Kobol came back to him: Half-drunken star voyagers that came back to die, here? We could all die here! "Commander Curtis, I was in the pyramid of the Ninth Lord of Kobol." Briefly, he explained about the Lords of Kobol and their use of pyramids as monumental tombs, drawing yet another parallel between Kobollian and Earth ancient history. "There was a warning etched into the outer stone, as well as concealed traps that when tripped had obviously killed more than one grave robber over the yahrens."
"Really?" Doctor Mufti replied. "Nothing quite so dramatic here, I'm afraid. The pyramid's opening was only sealed with rubble and once we cleared that away it was simple to penetrate. Curiously, booby traps within ancient pyramids have more substance in fiction than fact in Earth history. Just think about it, gentlemen. How long would a tautly strung bow shooting poisonous darts last before the bow string deteriorated and broke under all that tension? Then there's the Dirt Theory. Thousands of years of dirt and dust has a way of gumming up machinery that might trip these complex yet entertaining booby traps that Hollywood is so fond of. Just bury your car in the sand for a month, then unearth it and try and start it up again."
"Well, that cinches it. There's at least one Kobollian descendent in Hollywood," joked Baker.
"Really, Dr. Mufti?" Ryan asked. "You mean we're not in any danger of enormous stone balls chasing us down, threatening to squash us?" He perked up visibly.
"Or an infestation of murderous Martian scarabs," added Dayton as he paused to shine his illuminator over hieroglyphics on the walls. They looked almost as fresh as the day they had been carved. They indeed appeared to be in the language of the Egyptians, yet he was certainly no expert and wished that his father could be there to confirm his assumption. Man, his father would go ballistic if he could see all this . . . but then his father had to be dead by now.
"Can you read this?" asked Curtis, noticing Dayton's attention to a line of script along one wall.
"I wish. My father was an Egyptologist, Commander, and certainly I recognize a few characters, probably through osmosis, but mostly it's Greek to me."
"I actually haven't seen this one until now. I confess, I've concentrated more of my energies on the inner chamber. Now, let's see . . . it appears to be a religious text," Mufti told them, studying it further.
"Well, thank God for that," Baker smiled.
"In a scientific base?" asked Ryan.
"Why do you conclude this is a scientific base, Dr. Ryan?" Curtis asked.
"Mostly from all the technology it took to build it and keep it running," Ryan returned.
"Yet remember, the Kobollians were a devout people, Paddy," Dayton said.
"True enough," Ryan conceded, nodding.
"Nuk semiu-a em bah nebu rekh khert khat-senina aa er semeter maat," Mufti intoned.
"Which means?" asked Dietra.
"Roughly rendered it translates to: 'I offer up prayers in the presence of the Lords, knowing what concerneth their persons. I have approa . . .no, come advancing to make a stat . . .uh, declaration of right and truth.'"
"Lords?" echoed Jolly. "The Lords of Kobol?"
"Certainly worth considering. What really is compelling here is that the wording is suspiciously like writings in the Amduat. From The Book of the Dead."
"Book of the Dead?" Apollo asked.
"A collection of ancient Egyptian funerary hymns, magic formulae, litanies, incantations, prayers and words of power believed to aid the dead in the crossing to the next life." Mufti let out a brief sniff, running a hand over the symbols. "Fascinating."
"What?" Dayton asked.
"I also found hieroglyphics inside that reveal a remarkable correlation to other passages in the Book of the Dead."
"Oh?"
Mufti nodded his head enthusiastically. "Yes, listen carefully, I have them memorized. Lord, I will not interfere with divine balance. Lord, I will stop not a god when he comes forth. Lord, I do not offend the god who is at the helm. Lord, I do not harm my kinsmen. Lord, I do not kill. Lord, I am not an adulterer. Lord, I do not steal. Lord, I do not tell untruths. Lord, I do not wrong others."
"Sagan sakes," Apollo said. "Those passages are almost identical to those in the Book of the Word."
"And very similar to those in the Bible," Dayton added. "The Ten Commandments."
"Nine," Baker amended.
"Huh?"
"Dr. Mufti only mentioned nine, Mark. Correlated with my abridged version from our Holy Bible, Have no other gods before me, Make no idols, Do not misuse the name of God, Honour your mother and father, Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not lie, Do not covet another's property."
"Yes, Keep the Sabbath Holy is not there. You see, the Egyptians had no Sabbath," Dr. Mufti explained.
"What's a Sabbath?" Dietra asked.
"Evidently, neither did the Kobollians," Dayton smiled. "It's a day of the week that is observed as a day of rest and worship."
"So . . . are you insinuating the Ten Commandments came from Kobol, Doctor?" Ryan asked. "Not Mt. Sinai?"
"Well, as I said before, I thought it was Niribu, not Kobol, but that theory is paling by the minute. It's certainly a compelling hypothesis," Mufti replied.
"So . . . Moses went up Mt. Sinai where he was met by a Kobollian spaceship and given nine commandments," Baker said. "And he was so tired by the time he got back down, he added a day of rest."
"I like it," Ryan nodded.
"Yeah? Well, I don't," Dayton said. "It could be things happened just like the Bible said. Only God also spread His word to the ancient Kobollians."
"Thirty-five hundred years earlier," Ryan replied. "Guess he wanted to test run the commandments for a while, see how things went."
"God only knows," Baker replied, deadpan.
"Can we move this along?" inserted Cassie. "There are sick people to treat."
"She's right," said Dayton. "School's out. Let's scratch gravel."
"And we can scratch it with confidence, knowing there are no booby traps!" added Baker.
Mufti chuckled as they resumed their journey. "I believe the ancients thought the size of the stones that sealed the pyramids would be enough to thwart any attempt at intrusion, which of course proved to be erroneous. However, there are also several theories that it was the workers and the priests left to guard our pyramids that were the very men that later robbed them. Many an archaeologist has been disappointed to find that on discovery of an ancient site that tomb robbers long before beat them to what treasures and artefacts lay inside."
"And in this case?" Dayton asked, eager for information. For a moment, he felt like a kid again, listening to one of his father's stories about buried treasures and secret crypts. "I mean Mars isn't exactly a vacation Mecca for the Worshipful Brotherhood of Tomb Robbers and Body Snatchers. Is there a tomb in there, Doctor Mufti? And if so, had it been penetrated when you found it?"
"I believe this settlement was destroyed before the pyramid was properly sealed or even completed. Also, it doesn't appear as though it was actually a tomb, Commander Dayton. Thus far, we have found no evidence of a sarcophagus or similar objects which we generally associate with Earth pyramids."
"I remember the conclusion that Egyptian pyramids were built solely as tombs for the pharaohs was in contention back in our day," Ryan said.
"Largely conjecture originating from a psychic," Curtis replied. "Back in 1934 Edgar Cayce claimed that the ancient Egyptians were the descendants of a previous civilization who constructed the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx as 'Halls of Records' for the purpose of imparting scientific knowledge to future generations. There were generations of New Age writers that jumped on his bandwagon, even going so far as to claim the pyramids were stargates."
"Oh," replied Ryan with a smile as half of them entered an inner chamber. A small airlock had been fitted to the entrance. Once inside they waited until they were treated to a pressurized atmosphere, while trying to contain their excitement about what lay on the other side. "Sounds like you think the psychic is a psycho."
"Well said, Dr. Ryan, although once again one does have to wonder. There seems to be some truth in what Cayce hypothesized," Mufti laughed. "Back to the present, there is a recurring symbol that has been etched into the stone. Curiously, it is also well-known in Earth history. I'll show you rather than try to explain it."
"We look forward to it."
xxxxx
"And that was President Gibson, live from the White House, once again reassuring the citizens of the United States, and indeed the whole world, that world leaders have things well in hand. Just in, not only have British and French military officials reported that their armed forces are standing by, but Director Dayton of the Worldwide Aeronautics and Space Agency has informed us that recently developed WASA satellite technology, tested successfully only yesterday over the Atlantic Ocean, will be also be standing by in a state of readiness in the interests of worldwide security. Meanwhile, satellite imagery is negative for Cylons as Earth waits for further contact from our Colonial brethren. Over to you, Jill . . ."
"Did you hear the latest from the media? They're bloody threatening us!" Chairman Whatley told Director Mason over a secure line. "That was our Lightning they dropped in the drink, and they're treating it like a bloody test run!"
"Never mind that," replied Mason, somewhat sharply. "Have General Metencourt send in his troops. Their satellite weapons can't do anything against a ground assault, and they sure as hell didn't see it coming at Baikonur. We have to stop WASA. We have to assume control of the Guiana Space Centre and their satellite grid before the Cylons arrive."
"You mean take control. Consider it done," Whatley returned.
"Speaking of Baikonur, I can't get Borodin. He's unavailable, even on his urgent line."
"Concern yourself with President Gibson, and leave Russia to the Russians."
"General Roach is becoming a problem. He's freed Richard Dickins. Word has it they're at Area 51."
Whatley scoffed. "Erase him."
"Have you heard from Samael Asar?"
"No."
"But . . ."
"All of his predictions have come true to date. He'll be here when we need him."
An emergent tone sounded on the director's sat-phone. "I have to go, Whatley."
"So do I!"