Things seldom went as expected, at least in his case. Starbuck had disabled three Cylon Raiders with the Dynamo rigged onto his Wraith when he had interrupted an attack on the defenceless Earth shuttle, Venture. At that time he had actually thought the fighters would either burn up in the atmosphere or he would soon be contacting the Endeavour and would have reinforcements to finish them off. Meanwhile, if his calculations were right, they only had another forty-eight centars until the Clavis self-initiated, providing Malus hadn't fixed that problem. Best-laid schemes of warriors and rogues, Bucko . . .
"Is it burning up?" Jess asked expectantly.
"No, Director. The last one appears to be under power and on a course . . ."
"On course?" Starbuck said, suddenly all business. "Last Cylon? What's the status of the other two?" He moved towards the instruments, taking a moment to decipher them. While the technology was different, the basic information was the same.
"Two burned up on atmospheric entry, one is left," Jess quickly updated him, pointing to a pair of tracks on the scope, marking the final flame-out of the two Raiders.
"Where?" Surkov demanded. "Where is it?" He turned to Katko. "Colonel! Defence Readiness Condition to maximum! Notify Taraz and Aktobe Bases! Prepare surface-to-air missiles!" He launched into a diatribe of his native language, issuing orders as the colonel in turn began barking orders at subordinates in the Control Centre.
"Get me some decent real-time telemetry!" Orlov ordered, motioning at the massive screens at the front of the room. "We didn't put them up there to hide the ugly wallpaper, people!"
"Yes, sir."
A moment later they could all see the blip on the navigation board over Kazakhstan. Moving damned fast.
"It's here. How the hell did it follow us?" Jess asked.
Starbuck frowned, relieved that they had defences in place that could potentially take care of the threat. "Ion trails. Contrails." He sniffed humourlessly, as the real reason dawned on him. "The beacon on my Wraith."
"Beacon on your Wraith?" Jess echoed in horror. "Why didn't you disable it?"
"Kind of figured on doing that after contacting my base ship and shaking a few hands." He shrugged, pointedly palpating a lump on the back of his head. "It didn't quite work out that way."
"Tell me about it," she agreed.
"Bearing 227.6 degrees southwest, Flight Director. Air speed, seven hundred and sixteen miles per hour. Altitude, 40 000 feet."
"This Cylon fighter, is it armed with long-range missiles?" Surkov asked, arms crossed.
"No missiles," Starbuck shook his head. "Standard armament, two laser torpedoes pulsars. With a four point eight centimetron reinforced tylinium armour hull, with a thousand watton deflection point-diverter grid. Full 360 scan field."
"What does that make it? A flying tank?" muttered Jess.
"Tank?" Starbuck asked, the languaphone rendering it as a keg in space. "What's a tank?"
"What's a centimetron? What's tylinium?" Jess countered. The translation matrix wasn't exactly perfect.
"There's a plane up there!" Sadowski reported. "Commercial airliner at 35 000 feet!" He pointed to the blip indicating the craft in question for the rest. "The Cylon is moving to intercept!"
"Can you warn them?" shouted Jess.
"The enemy is practically on top of it! Intercept in thirty seconds!"
"Colonel General, if we fire surface-to-air missiles, they'll hit the airliner!" Katko exclaimed.
"As with the new ASAT, Dayton," Orlov told his director. "It would knock out the airliner's navigation."
"What are our airborne assets at the moment?" asked Surkov. He cursed acidly. Nothing airborne was anywhere near to being in range to intercept. Nonetheless, he ordered a scramble from the closest bases.
"Unarmed airliner," snorted Katko, giving Jess a quick glance. "How you say, sitting turkey."
"Duck," Jess said.
"Now might be a good time for celestial intervention, Baltar," Starbuck said through gritted teeth, careful to switch back to Colonial Standard. Jess was looking at him in concern. "You had no qualms about breaking rules when you had both feet on the ground, why change now?"
"Amusing, yet redundant," the other replied, looking more than a little concerned himself.
"C'mon, Baltar, I'd bet a sectons pay that Ama would zap them into another dimension where Cylons are used as personal portable trash compacters."
"Perhaps."
"Gotta be a drag to rise from Traitor of Mankind to celestial hack, only to find you had more power as a human. Are you sure I can't trade you in on someone more useful? You could go polish the lights on the Ship Of. It's looking a bit lacklustre from where I'm standing."
"You can't bait me, Starbuck. I'm impervious to your taunts."
"I'm just warming up," he returned.
"Starbuck! Speak English! What are you saying?" Jess shouted, grabbing him by the jumpsuit and coming nose to nose with him. She obviously thought he was cracking up.
And she wasn't far off. In his helplessness and frustration he had gone from Colonial Warrior to angel baiter, first class. Apollo would strip and module him if he knew. He took a deep breath, focussing his attention on her.
"Kobollian prayer," he adlibbed by way of explanation.
"Kobollian . . . Can't you do anything?" she asked, desperation in her tone.
"There's not enough time, Jess. If I could get up there in the Wraith . . . then maybe . . . but . . ." He fanned his hands wide, helplessly. "Frack, I wouldn't even make it to the runway . . ."
"It's a JAXA Supersonic Transport! There are three hundred civilians aboard!" Orlov cried. "A flight from Tokyo to London!"
"Frackin' Hades hole, Baltar!" Starbuck exploded. "Do something!"
"Is this 'Baltar'. . . a . . . a Kobollian deity?"
Starbuck closed his eyes, groaning.
xxxxx
It seemed to be taking hours. They had found the "black box" from the Cylon fighter, all right. They had found it in a million pieces, labelled and filed away in boxes and totally beyond telling anything useful about how a relatively new Cylon fighter and its crew could have possibly crash landed on Earth over a hundred years ago. To his credit, however, that hadn't dissuaded the Colonial technician. Now out of detainment and given a purpose, he had transformed into a new man. Dickins had mentioned that they built them tough in the colonies and after a thousand years of war, their people had a way of brushing aside the traumatic to give their full attention to the crucial. Given a bench and a set of tools, Hummer soon had the flight recorder reassembled, though power was still a problem. After a few frustrating centons, he had gone to the actual Cylons, or at least the one that had the most pieces intact. Externally, it looked like it had taken heavy damage, the body severely scorched and torn. He ripped it apart, and after a minute or two, smiled in success. It seemed that each robot still had some kind of auxiliary power unit inside. After a few more minutes of fiddling the unit began to blink. Going back to one of the damaged centurions, looking for something inside that he was certain would still give him the necessary answers, Hummer at last extracted another electronic unit. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, with exposed leads on one end and a smooth metal case. Hummer somehow connected the extracted device to the flight data recorder and after a few words of Colonial-cuss, images began to form on a monitor screen. With some more adjustments, they cleared up.
"Well? What have we got?" Roach asked impatiently.
"We have it. Come take a look," Dickins replied as Hummer nodded enthusiastically.
"What is it?" demanded the general.
"Looks like the whole enchilada," said Dickins. "From the information Hummer retrieved from the Cylon's data banks, they were in a battle just before this happened. If I'm right, they were in the very battle with the Colonials that precipitated our own journey through a wormhole that brought me and Hummer to Earth in the Endeavour."
"And Lucifer and his Raider to the moon," Grae added, leafing through a stack of papers. Dickins started rifling through a set aside pile of photographs. "But the time difference . . . why did this ship arrive one hundred and eight years earlier?"
"Some kind of space-time distortion within the wormhole," Hummer suggested through the languatron as he made final adjustments to the equipment, jury-rigged to transmit what the Cylons had 'experienced'. "Our own knowledge of such things is unfortunately limited."
"So this is essentially going to be through the eyes of the Cylon?" asked Grae. "We see what he . . . uh, it saw?"
"The optical array," replied Hummer with a nod, toggling a switch. "Yes. A Cylon's-eye-view. Fortunately, we had Cylons on board the Galactica which we deactivated once they piloted Baltar back to the Fleet, so I'm somewhat familiar with them. Dr. Wilker was attempting to decipher their programming, but before he had a chance we were ordered to reassemble the Cylons and get them back in working condition, but that's another story. Anyhow, that's when we deduced that while in flight what each centurion experiences is downloaded into the data recorder, along with how the ship performed for later download when they return to their Base Ships. We surmised it's a secondary way of debriefing the pilots should that become necessary. Each one is stored in a separate file. Hopefully, I can access the right one . . . ah!"
They all crowded around.
On screen, the view through what had to be the Raider's viewport was chaotic, as it appeared that the Raider was whipped around, spinning out of control. All attempts by the crew to regain control were futile as the fighter was tossed about like a piece of debris in a tornado. Sparks flew from panels and smoke filled the cockpit. Just when it seemed that the harried craft could take no more . . .
Everything was still. The tumbling stopped and the whine of the engines dropped to a low vibration.
Flight Leader Vulca looked down at his instruments, then barked: "Report."
"By-your-command. We-have-exited-the-wormhole. Scanners-and-weapons-off-line."
"Contact-Commander-Lucifer."
"By-your-command," replied the other centurion. "There-is-no-response."
"Flight-Leader," said the other pilot. "We-are-approaching-a-planet."
Out the ports, almost directly in front of them, hung a huge blue planet swathed with clouds. Again, the crew attempted to scan the new world without success. Some form of residual radion was interfering with their systems.
"Enter-orbit and-attempt-to-effect-repairs," ordered Vulca.
"By-your-command."
Sluggishly, the Cylon fighter eased itself into an orbit around the planet, over three-hundred kilometrons high. After several centars of attempts, it was clear that neither Commander Lucifer nor the Base Ship were in the vicinity or would be answering either hails or their distress beacon.
"Scanners-operational," reported one of the pilots, Centurion Carnifex.
"Initiate-full-scan-of-the-planet," ordered Vulca.
"By-your-command."
"Status?" Vulca asked the other, Centurion Confector. Across the control board, several instruments were either blinking alarms or were dark.
"By-your-command. Weapons-off-line We-are-low-on-fuel. Less-than-twelve-percent-remaining. Structural-integrity-unknown."
"Flight-Leader," reported Carnifex, "the-planet-below-reads-positive-for-life-forms. Human."
"Human?"
"Confirmed, by-your-command. The-planet-is-fully-inhabited, but-is-not-recorded-in-our-databanks."
"Level?"
"Unknown. We-are-not-scanning-any-satellites-or-spacecraft. All-signals-from-the-surface-are-in-a-primitive-mode. Amplitude-modulation, gamma-band-transmissions."
"Any-indication-that-we-have-been-detected?" asked Vulca.
"No, by-your-command. No-indication-of-scanning-devices-at-this-altitude."
"We-must-inform-Imperious-Leader," said Vulca.
"We-are-out-of-communications-range-with-Cylon. We-cannot-inform-any…"
"By-your-command," interrupted Confector.
"Speak."
"Radion-detected-below."
"Radion?"
"Confirmed. Some-form-of-nuclear-fission-weapon-detected."
"Take-us-closer."
"By-your-command."
"We-will-not-have-enough-fuel-to-return-to-space," Carnifex informed him.
Vulca was inflexible. Humans had been found here. While the lack of any space traffic was puzzling, the presence of potential weapons below called for further investigation. The risks were not even to be entertained.
Slowly, the fighter banked and fired braking thrusters to slow for atmospheric entry. With scanners locked onto the mysterious source of radion, they came in over a vast ocean, making for a large continental landmass. Passing over a large city, Vulca was "tempted" to open fire, but this had become a mission of reconnaissance. The city and its human vermin could go on living for a little while longer. The Alliance would destroy them all in good time.
This planet's topography was wildly varied. The ship passed over cities, high mountains, green areas, and wide, seemingly lifeless deserts, all while remaining locked on target.
"By-your-command," said Carnifex. "Scanning-device-detected."
"Source?"
"Near-the-coordinates-of-the-nuclear-signature."
"Range-to-target?"
"Three-hundred-kilometrons and-closing."
"Full-scan. Arm-weapons."
"By-your-command."
"Atmospheric-electrical-disturbance-ahead," said Confector. Outside, a flash of lightning arced across the storm-filled sky.
"Circumnavigate."
"Attempting-to-"
The centurion was interrupted by a shot of sparks and smoke erupting from the panel in front of him.
"Report."
"We-have-been-struck-by-an-atmospheric-electrical-discharge. Alien-scanners-also-interfering-with-systems."
The ship rocked again as another bolt of lightning coruscated along the hull. The engines surged, then died. Several of the instruments went dark.
"Return-to-orbit," ordered Vulca.
The battered craft would not respond. As the sound of wind on the hull grew to a shriek, they could see the rain sluicing off the view ports and the ground coming up fast. Despite all attempts, the Raider was screaming towards the surface. Vulca watched the altimeter count down as they drew closer to the ground. A thousand metrons. Nine hundred. Eight. Seven. He reached over, activate the landing gear.
"We-are-about-to-crash," observed Confector
Anything beyond an observation was beyond Vulca as he looked ahead. There, ahead, was some sort of land form. The ship drew closer . . .
The screen went dark.
"Is that it?" Roach asked, his brows knitting in consternation as he leaned in closer.
"Just a centon," Hummer replied, making an adjustment. "Obviously, they crashed. I suspect the centurion was deactivated for a while before it reinitialised." He nodded at some readings. "Here we are . . ."
The screen flickered to life again.
The next thing Vulca computed, he was staring upwards through a wide gap in his ship's cockpit. He accessed his internal chrono. He had been inactive for over two centars. He straightened up and looked about. Outside, the port was partly covered in dirt and some sort of plant form was sticking through the gap. Obviously, the ship had crashed into the planet's surface.
"Report."
Centurion Carnifex was immobile and would never respond again, pinned to the control panel by his seat, thrown forward by the impact. He was also impaled by the vegetation, right through his chest assembly. Confector was attempting to rise, but was likewise pinned by his mangled seat. Ignoring his crew, Vulca freed himself from his seat and exited the craft through the rip in the hull. Internal gyros sluggish, he struggled to keep his feet as his systems tried to adjust to this world's gravity.
The ship had come down in a wilderness of desert characteristics, having hit the surface several hundred metrons back,and skidded in, finally impacting an outcrop of rock. Debris trailed behind it and one engine was leaking fuel. The fact that they were fortunate the ship had not exploded upon impact never occurred to the Cylon. Survival was merely filed away as data.
Vulca turned as a sound reached his sensors. He had detected and catalogued all the sounds so far. The wind, the surviving centurion inside the wreckage, his own sounds, but this was different. It was mechanized, though of an unfamiliar type. Amplifying the inputs and going to magnification and multi-spectral imaging, he soon located the direction the strange sounds were coming from. A vehicle was approaching at high speed across the desert. But its sound signature did not match anything in his data files. He calculated it would be here in less than two centons. Acting according to programming, he reached back inside the downed craft and retrieved a pulse rifle. He emerged just as the first of the vehicles came into view. It slowed. He could see that it was filled with humans.
"What the hell?" said one of the humans, though Vulca could not understand the language.
"Halt, humans!" he ordered.
"What the hell is that thing, Sarge?" said another of the humans. "Them Russkies?"
"Don't look like any Russkies I ever seen."
"How many ya get in Montana, Brown?"
Vulca opened fire, his first shot striking the first vehicle directly in the front. The engine exploded, blowing chunks in all directions. Almost at once, one of the humans returned fire. Several rounds struck Vulca. Slug-throwers. Primitive weaponry. Unconcerned, Vulca fired repeated, exterminating the humans as he'd been programmed. Screams echoed through the air as they began to scatter for cover. More arrived behind the first, and more shots were exchanged. Vulca continued to advance on them, destroying them. Then, a small object landed near him. Vulca looked down . . .
There was a bright flash of light and the image broke up into pixels. There were distorted images of what looked like people, then the screen went dark.
"That looked like a grenade," Roach said. "Wonder what happened next?"
"I think I can tell you," Grae replied, selecting one of the papers from his hand. "This is the official report from Sergeant Reynolds, the man in charge of that unit and the only survivor, although I'd love to get LM Dayton to find out where he ended up. Seems that the Cylon was blown off his feet and into the hull of the Raider. Hard. Suffice it to say that it didn't get up again. Reynolds reported back to his superior officer at the Roswell Army Air Base and it looks like within a couple of hours the Strategic Services Unit—in charge of secret intelligence and counter-espionage—from the War Office sent a unit of military intelligence officers to the site. The debris field was cordoned off, all roads to the crash site were shut down, and there was a blackout ordered on information getting out."
"The War Office, huh?" Colonel Bradshaw said. "Didn't it become part of the Department of Defence?"
"Yes, it did," replied Roach, leaning on the edge of the table with his fists "But the Strategic Services Unit was ultimately incorporated into the Central Intelligence Agency, which was created post-war in 1947." He grimaced, not liking where this was going. "What do you know about the CIA and the Order of the Skull and Bones, Ryan?"
Ryan grinned. "You've been talking to LM, haven't you, Roach? She told me a while back that a Yale history professor, Gaddis Smith, was once quoted as saying that Yale had influenced the CIA more than any other university, giving the agency the atmosphere of a class reunion."
"I just knew that was coming," Roach sighed, dropping his head, shaking it.
"Further to that, we all know who the Director of the CIA reports to these days."
"The Director of National Intelligence," Roach replied, nodding. He straightened up and tugged at the hem of his uniform. "Still, it's a little thin."
"Maybe this will help," Dickins said, dropping a photograph on a table. It was an old black-and-white glossy, a bit yellowed and curled on the edge. It showed a group of men and one woman standing beside the wreckage of the Raider at the crash site in 1947. Most were dressed in military uniforms. A few wore civilian clothes. On the ground in front of them lay the battered remains of one of the centurions.
"I did glance at that. Who are they again?" Ryan asked, picking it up and turning it over as he sat down at the table. "Ah, men from the Strategic Services Unit. It even has their names listed."
"But one man here isn't identified," Dickins told them, taking the photo, placing it on the table. He stabbed a forefinger at a well-dressed man in a three-piece suit who stood slightly apart from the others. Comparatively, from his bearing and stature, he looked like he was from another class of men altogether. Even in the old snapshot, he had the most . . . magnetic eyes. "This guy here."
"I didn't notice." Ryan looked up at the astronaut. "You know him?"
"Not personally, but I know of him. I saw some vid-feed on him during the short time I spent on the Galactica with the Colonials." The general and Grae looked at him, surprised. "He'd made his appearance roughly a year before Starbuck sprang us from Motel Torg. They had him pegged as evil incarnate. He went, so Commander Adama told us, by the name of Count Iblis."
"Iblis . . ." Grae murmured. "I'm sure that's the name of the being that the Guardians warned Jess Dayton about."
"For good reason. He tried to kill her father when he was only a kid," Dickins replied. "Guess Dayton's daughter wouldn't be the executive director of WASA now if he'd succeeded." He dropped the photo. "Maybe I wouldn't have been blown halfway across the galaxy. Who knows?"
"She's the director now, by the way," Grae told him. "Our previous director was killed." He took the photo, looking at it again. "They said if we searched long and hard enough that we'd find him. Jaysus Murphy, here he is locked up behind blast doors at Area 51. Tell me, Captain Dickins, how different did Count Iblis look between this photo and the video you saw when you were with the Colonials?"
"Except for the clothes, he looked exactly the same," Dickins replied. "Even his hair was combed the same. One hundred and seven years later, he hadn't aged a day."
"That's impossible," Roach replied. "It just can't . . ."
"Like extraterrestrials? Like the government burying all of this?" Grae waved a hand, indicating the wrecked Raider and the whole hangar. "Like the Director of the National Intelligence ordering a hit on a nice guy like me?" he countered. "Makes me wonder if we put Iblis' picture into the National Intelligence data base just where else in history Count Iblis would show up." He nodded to himself. "In fact, I can copy Iblis' image by taking a picture of it with someone's phone. Then I can send it to LM and see what she can dig up."
"You think she could find something?" asked Dickins.
"You kidding? If she tried hard enough, she could line up King Tut for an interview. She might get the results even quicker than National Intelligence. Who has a sat-phone?"
"I do," Roach replied, tossing it over. "My access code is 1-3-1-4."
"Thanks, General." Grae began punching buttons, and was soon lining up his shot. Then he added, "I'm going through a filter. You won't be able to trace her."
"I'm done chasing her, Ryan. Sounds like we're all after this Count Iblis guy now. Or whoever's working for him."
"Just as long as we're clear on that account," Grae replied, thumbing the keys on the sat-phone.
"You ain't just another pretty face, are you, kid," Dickins said approvingly, slapping Grae on the shoulder. He walked over to Roach, standing in front of him and crossing his arms over his chest. "Well, General. The time has come. What are you going to do?"
"Well, Captain, for starters I'm calling the President."
"You think it'll do a damned bit of good? Nobody knows how deep this cancer goes. What if he turns out to be in on the plot?"
"Let me tell you something, Captain, most of what I've believed to be true up until now has been chewed up, spat out, and thrown back in my face today. Even after all of that, I refuse to believe that the President of the United States of America could betray his own people, even unwittingly. He'll do the right thing."
"He'd better, General."
"I'll make sure of it."
xxxxx
Far away, LM Dayton watched as the image rolled out of the printer. She'd downloaded Ryan's transmission, zoomed in and printed the image of the man in question. For a moment, she just stared at it, slack-jawed. What? Him? How in . . .
"Why you devil, you," she murmured, reaching for her laptop.
xxxxx
Author's note:
With many thanks to Senmut, beta-reader extraordinaire, for the Roswell flashback.