01 - Battlestar Galactica (5 page)

“As if you don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Would you like
a drink?”

She shook her head. “I don’t need one. Come here, Gaius. I want to see
something.”

“Mm?” he asked, standing up unsteadily.

“You heard me.”

“Yes, I did. Now, what did you want to see?” He smiled with anticipation as
she leaned forward at his approach.

She tipped her head back to look up at him, as her hands found him and began fondling him. “I wanted to see how glad you were to see
me,” she whispered.

“Very glad to see you,” he sighed, shutting his eyes with pleasure. He
slipped his fingers into her hair and bent to kiss her. “My Natasi, are you
feeling particularly animalistic today?” he asked huskily.

By way of answering, she rose suddenly from the chair and pressed him
backward, until she had driven him up against the nearby wall. She kissed him
hungrily, and began pulling at his clothing. Soon she had him bare-chested, and
her own blouse was on the floor. Her mouth eagerly sought his, and they stumbled
into the bedroom, groping each other and kissing. “Mm, d’you miss me?” she
murmured breathlessly.

He struggled to catch his own breath, not wanting to miss a single kiss. “How
can you tell?”

A tiny laugh came from her throat as she placed her hands behind his neck and
pulled him to her. “Mmm, your body misses me,” she whispered, kissing him
furiously, “but what about your heart? Your soul?”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Those too.” He could not move his hands over her fast
enough.

She rose on her tiptoes so that he could kiss her neck. She purred with
pleasure. “Do you love me, Gaius?” she asked, without interrupting the
passionate kissing.

“Uh—
what?”
His heart fluttered; he wasn’t sure he had heard her right.

She stopped what she was doing and cradled his face with both hands. “Do…
you… love me?” Her gaze penetrated his, penetrated the haze of his lust.

This time his heart didn’t flutter; it froze in paralysis and even fear.
Do you love me?
Those were the words they’d never asked or given. This wasn’t about love, this was about raw animal attraction, about
kindred spirits in carnal lust. For a long moment, he didn’t know what to say.
Finally, because her eyes seemed starving for an answer, he murmured, “Are you
serious?”

She held his gaze just a moment longer, then suddenly grinned. He joined her
in a quiet laugh, and they began kissing again. “You had me… worried, there,”
he managed, so relieved he couldn’t even speak. She didn’t answer, but kissed
him more feverishly than ever.

Without warning, she pushed him backward onto the bed, practically threw him.
Stunned—he never knew she had that kind of strength—he lay helpless as she
grabbed the waistband of his leisure pants, and ripped them off with a powerful
jerk. He was beyond stunned; he was at her mercy. With another murmur of
pleasure, she hiked up her skirt and swiftly mounted him. He gasped with ecstasy
…

Natasi rocked back and forth on the writhing figure of Dr. Baltar. She peeled
the rest of her own clothes off, panting with uncontrolled passion. “I’m hot,
Gaius,” she moaned. “I’m
… so hot.”

As their lovemaking mounted toward a climax, the wall behind her was warmed
slightly by a peculiar, nearly invisible light. The doctor never saw it—and
wouldn’t have, even if he had been less distracted. The light was mostly
infrared, with just a hint of gamma radiation. If his eyes
could
have
seen it, they would have seen the glow of fiery embers, the glow of heating
coils. It was a soft glow, but growing in intensity, growing with the woman’s
sexual fervor. Indeed, it came from, and illuminated, the spine of the gorgeous,
naked being who was rocking and bobbing as she made love to Gaius Baltar.

Galactica,
En Route to Caprica

The immense, lozenge-shaped battlestar grew to resemble a fortress wall in
front of the dome of stars, as the fighter-craft arrowed in smoothly on its
landing approach. The pilot, Captain Lee Adama, was on a “high downwind
approach”—named for a purely imaginary wind that the battlestar flew into like a
seagoing aircraft carrier turning into the wind so that its planes could land.
And indeed, the battlestar was very much like an aircraft carrier in space. In
normal operations, it carried as many as fifty fighter, recon, and other
spacecraft to support its mission;
Galactica
carried fewer now. Lee
rolled his craft to permit a clear view out the canopy as he glided past the
great ship’s nose, and then her upper left flank. It was standard practice to
make a visual inspection of the ship on approach, but also good sense: If you’d
rather not fly into something, make sure you can see it.

For Lee Adama, it was a view of a ship he had not seen in a long time.
Galactica’s
basic shape was pretty simple, a sort of boxy whale shape—but
its surface was convoluted with ridges and canyons and a huge landing pod on either side. Some of its hull plating
appeared pretty battered, and the ship as a whole looked scoured and worn with
age, as he knew it would.
Galactica
was long past ready for retirement.

The voice in his helmet was clear and matter-of-fact:
“Viper
Four-Five-Zero, this is
Galactica,
approach port landing bay, hands-on,
speed one-zero-five, checkers red, call the ball.”

Lee thumbed the mic switch.
“Galactica,
this is Viper Four-Five-Zero.
Check that. Did you say hands-on approach?”

“Viper Four-Five-Zero, that’s affirmative. Hands-on approach.”

“Copy,
Galactica.”
That seemed a bit unusual. The last time he’d
served on a battlestar, manual approaches were made only for training purposes
or if there was a problem. Of course, that had been
Atlantia,
the newest
battlestar in the fleet, not the oldest. “Port landing bay, hands-on approach,
speed one-zero-five,” he repeated back, as he applied braking thrust and began
the flip-over-and-thrust-downward base-leg maneuver that would bring him to the
level of the aft landing-bay door. As he rotated and pitched over again to face
forward relative to the ship, the landing bay came into view, and along with it
the landing guidance lights. The lights traced a welcoming line into the bay. “I
have the ball.” He applied thrust, to accelerate to final approach speed.

If he hadn’t had other things on his mind, he might have enjoyed the hands-on
approach. It was what flying was all about: man and machine, spinning and
dancing through space. Right now, though, he was tired and preoccupied. He
brought the Viper into the long, cavernous landing bay with practiced ease,
slowing as he approached the red-checkered landing pad. He made the final
maneuver, turning to use his thrust for braking, and popping side thrusters to
line up on the pad. He felt the thump of contact, and killed the power.

“Skids down, mag-locks secured.”

That was the LSO, the Landing Signal Officer, announcing the arrival—not so
much for his benefit as for the deck crew’s. The elevator pad he’d landed on was
already lowering him into the hangar deck below. He could feel the Lorey-field
gravity pulling him down into his seat.

“On behalf of
Galactica,
I’d like to welcome you on board, Apollo.
It’s an honor to have you with us.”

Lee made a quick acknowledgment as he went quickly through the post-landing
checklist. Confirm main thrust off, fuel flow off, maneuvering thrusters off,
transponder off…

Minutes later, a tractor was towing him from the elevator pad into the
brightly lit main hangar area. He pulled off his spacesuit gloves, pressed the
time-of-arrival button on the flight computer on his wrist, and took a moment to
draw a deep breath. The flight was over; now the ordeal would begin.

The canopy lifted, and a deckhand reached in to help loosen his spacesuit
helmet and lift it away. Lee took half a moment to gather himself and unbuckle
his harness, then he climbed out of the cockpit and down the steps that the deck
crew had pushed up. Other hands were already at work servicing his craft. And
standing in front of him, dressed in the orange-and-black jumpsuit of the hangar
crew, was a serious-looking young man, hand to his forehead in salute. “Good
morning, sir. Chief Tyrol. I’ll be your crew chief while you’re aboard.”

“Morning, Chief. Captain Lee Adama.” He tried to make it sound polite, but he
knew that his lack of enthusiasm probably showed.

Tyrol was undeterred. “It’s a real pleasure to”—Lee was already walking away,
ducking past the other Vipers, but Tyrol hurried to keep up—“meet you, sir.” Lee
didn’t answer. “I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but I’m a great admirer of
your father’s. The service is going to miss him when he retires.”

There it was. It hadn’t taken two minutes from his arrival. He tried to keep
his true feelings in check. “Well, I’m sure someone will.” Quick change of
subject. “Is your auto-landing system down? I was hands-on for the whole
approach.”

Tyrol look puzzled and a little taken aback. “It’s all hands-on here,
Captain. There are no auto-landing systems on the
Galactica.”
He paused,
then added pointedly,
“Commander…
Adama’s… orders.”

Lee hesitated. What
could
he say? It was explain everything, or
nothing. Finally, he simply said, “Is that right?” and walked away across the
expansive hangar deck, leaving the crew chief standing perplexed behind him.

“Attention in the port hangar bay. Raptor touching down. Clear. The checker
is red.”

The craft coming in behind the Viper—one of
Galactica’s
own—wasn’t
doing so well in the final positioning and flare for landing. Crew Chief Tyrol
watched on a monitor, wincing, as the LSO rasped out instructions to the pilot
to watch her drift and cut her approach speed. The craft was rocking back and
forth on the roll axis, and more alarmingly, skidding first to one side and then
the other as it approached the assigned landing point. Finally it slammed onto
the landing pad with a jolt that Tyrol could feel all the way down on the hangar
deck.
“Frak,”
he muttered, and strode out to await the Raptor’s crew as
the elevator brought it down into the hangar.

Where the Viper looked like a flying stinger, the Raptor seemed more like a
hunched-over beetle—not unbeautiful to anyone who loved flying machines, but
definitely ungainly. The Raptor was a multipurpose
tactical-strike/combat-coordination craft, an important part of
Galactica’s
flying arsenal. It was also, at the moment, in the hands of the youngest rookie pilot in
Galactica
’s
squadron. Tyrol met the Raptor as it was being towed into its parking space,
and hopped onto the side-flare of the hull that served as an entry platform,
without waiting for the craft to come to a halt. He was met in the hatch by the
pilot, a hassled-looking Sharon Valerii, known in the cockpit as Boomer. She was
a strikingly attractive, petite brunette with Oriental features. Right now, she
looked ready to kill someone.

He wasn’t about to cut her any slack. “Nice landing, Lieutenant. I think they
heard that one all the way up on the bridge.”

Boomer glared at him and retorted in a rapid-fire stream. “Yeah, I’m gonna
catch hell from the LSO. But it wasn’t entirely my fault, Chief. The primary
gimbal’s acting up again.”

Tyrol rolled his eyes, following her down off the Raptor to the hangar deck.
“Oh, it’s the gimbal’s fault.”

Exasperated, Boomer turned to her copilot and electronics officer, who was
just emerging from the Raptor, clipboard in hand. “Helo, am I lying?”

Helo worked a wad of gum around in his mouth. “Gimbal looked bad to me.”

Tyrol blew up. “I’ve pulled that gimbal three times and stripped it twice.
The gimbal’s not the problem.
Sir.”
He stalked away from the craft,
followed briskly by Boomer.

“You’re not listening to me, Chief.”

“Lieutenant, I listen very closely to what each and every one of my pilots
has to say”
Even the rookies,
he thought but did not say aloud. He turned
back to look at the rookie pilot, who happened also to be his superior officer.

Boomer had calmed slightly, but remained adamant. “You’re not the one out
there trying to bring in
fifty tons of Raptor
onto a moving hangar
deck—with a bad gimbal.”

Tyrol yanked open the swinging steel door to the tool room and yelled back at her as she followed him into the cramped, walk-in storage
closet. “I’ve got ten years’ experience—”

“Here we go!” she cried, slamming the bulkhead door shut behind her.

“—of breaking down and stripping every component of every system that’s—”

Boomer chanted the rest of his tirade right along with him.

“—ever been installed in every spacecraft on my hangar deck!” As they berated
each other, he was loosening and removing his tool belt—and she was yanking
loose the hardware that secured her flight-suit.

He whirled around, dropping the act. Grabbing her by the front of her
flight-suit, he pulled it apart from the neck down to the waist, and with her
help, peeled it roughly off her shoulders and arms. Underneath, she was wearing
a plain brown tank top. As he pulled her toward him, she grabbed his chin with
one hand, pinching his cheeks together. “The gimbal—is—faulty,” she growled into
his face.

“Shut up, sir,” he muttered, and pulled her into an urgent kissing embrace.
She clutched him just as urgently. They kissed like forbidden lovers, tearing at
each others’ clothes as if they couldn’t get enough, fast enough. There was, in
fact, no telling how long they had, or when they’d get another chance—or whether
they’d be caught this time, or the next. Neither of them spoke, not now, at
least not in words….