03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (29 page)

… something that didn’t altogether make sense.

Boxey’s impulse was to trust Kara Thrace. And Helo… hell, he had seen
Helo’s bravery close-up and first-hand, when the valiant lieutenant had given up
his seat on the rescue raptor to Gaius Baltar in the firm belief that Baltar was
more important than a lowly raptor pilot. Kara was his friend, Helo was a hero,
and friends didn’t lie to you and heroes were better than other people. So every
instinct of his told him that there was no reason he shouldn’t just march right
back to
Galactica…

Except…

Except he had seen Kara’s eyes when she had told him that he had to leave. He
had seen the frustration and, most of all, the uncertainty there. She had come
across as extremely sympathetic, but there had still been something there in the
way she looked at him that suggested she thought maybe…

… possibly…

… that he could be one of…

… them.

Well, that was the problem with suspicion, wasn’t it? Once it took hold in
one’s imaginings, it was difficult to blast it loose. Starbuck had been
suspicious that Boxey was a Cylon, and even though he’d been cleared of it, it
was always going to be in the back of her mind.

And suspicion went two ways. Just as doubts about Boxey had been planted in
Kara Thrace’s mind, so too was he now starting to harbor doubts about her. Not
that she wasn’t human; oddly, the thought that she was anything other than flesh
and blood, normal, one hundred percent a spawn of humanity never entered Boxey’s
mind. But the notion that her intentions toward him might be something other
than she was saying… well, now that was coming straight to the forefront of
his concerns. Because as he gazed into her eyes, he was seeing some of that same
concern, and that didn’t seem right to him. She should be overjoyed that he was
going to be coming back with her. She should be smugly triumphant that she had
managed to achieve the damned-near impossible: to get Adama and Tigh to change
their minds on a matter of security. None of that was present in her expression,
and when Boxey shifted his gaze to Helo, he wasn’t seeing it there either.
Instead he saw that same kind of guarded look that roused his suspicions and
made him wonder just what the hell was going on.

He glanced at the mighty hammer emblem on the wall and surprised even himself
when he mentally directed a plea toward it of
Give me strength.

“Really,” he echoed once more. Boxey had long ago acquired the habit of
thinking quickly and his mind was racing faster than even Kara Thrace would have
suspected or been able to adjust to. “Y’know what? How about this? How about you stay for dinner tonight. I’m eating with Freya, and she’s not here right now
’cause she was heading over to
Galactica
to talk with Sharon again.” He
watched carefully and saw Starbuck flinch just a bit when he mentioned Sharon’s
name. “But I bet she’d have no problem with you guys as guests.”

“I don’t know that we’d be her favorite people right now, sport,” Helo said.
His legs were outstretched and he crossed them at the ankle. He looked casual
and comfortable. Except not exactly: Instead it looked like he was trying his
damnedest to look as casual and comfortable as possible, which suggested to
Boxey that maybe he was neither. “This whole thing with her representing Sharon… I think she’d be worried about… you know… talking to us. And things
she might say…” He looked to Starbuck and there was a flash of desperation
in his eyes as if he needed her to bail him out.

Starbuck quickly stepped in. “She’d probably be worried that she might say
something she shouldn’t and violate the whole, you know, client/patient
confidentiality thing.”

“Sharon isn’t her patient.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Not completely, no,” said Boxey, which was true enough.

“I’m just thinking,” Kara said, and she patted him on the shoulder, “that we
should head back to
Galactica
now. Because… you know…”

“The surprise,” said Helo.

She glanced at him and made a show (too big a show, as far as Boxey was
concerned) of looking annoyed with him. “You’re supposed to keep that to
yourself,” she said. Heaving an annoyed sigh, she said to Boxey, “The guys were
making a surprise party for you coming back, and big-mouth here tipped it off.
Don’t let on that you know, okay?”

On the surface of it, it all seemed perfectly harmless. Boxey wanted to believe her. He didn’t want to overcomplicate this. She had come to
him, and really he’d been dreaming that she would. He’d dreamt that exactly this
moment would arrive and now that it had… it didn’t feel right, smell right,
sound right.

He remembered playing cards with Starbuck and the others, and he suddenly
remembered one simple fact about her that had played to his advantage that
evening when he’d thrashed her to within an inch of her chip stack: Starbuck was
a lousy liar. She just stank at it. She was a little better at it when she’d had
too much to drink, which was probably more often than she should have. But she
wasn’t much better sober, and generally speaking she was woefully deficient at
it. It went against the grain, because Starbuck was much more someone who not
only excelled at saying precisely what was on her mind, but reveled in whatever
trouble might arise when she did so.

She wasn’t telling the truth now. Or at least she was withholding part of it.
So why was Helo there? Because she knew perfectly well that she stank at it and
might well have been afraid that, left to her own devices, she wouldn’t carry it
off sufficiently to achieve her goal. So he was there to help.

But what was her goal?

The tumblers clicked with ruthless efficiency through Boxey’s mind and
unlocked the obvious answer. They wanted Boxey back at
Galactica.
That
much was the truth, which was why she might have thought she could carry this
thing through. But it wasn’t for the reason she was telling Boxey now. He was
almost positive of it.

There was one way to know for sure, though.

Boxey leaned back on the bench and draped his arms on the table. He looked
extremely casual, maintaining the illusion that this was just a group of friends
chatting away with one another.

“How about tomorrow?” he said.

“Tomorrow?” Kara looked surprised and puzzled. “Why, uh… why wait until
tomorrow?”

“Is there any reason I can’t?” He was speaking very carefully, his voice
remaining noncommittal, as if he had no suspicions at all that something might
be wrong.

“No,” Kara said quickly, and she looked up at Agathon, who barely shrugged.
“No, no reason not, except… y’know… the surprise thing…”

“They can do it tomorrow, right? Or next week?”

“Next week?” she repeated.

“Yeah, it’s just that…” He thought fast. “This week is a Midguardian
holiday.”

“All week?”

“Yeah, all week. They do a lot of praying and celebrating and… stuff.
And I… well, I kind of promised Freya that I’d be here for it. So I really
feel like I should be. So maybe next week. That works better for me. Does that
work for you?”

He could sense something changing in the room. Although Helo and Starbuck
didn’t exchange words, the tension level increased unspoken, and Boxey intuited
exactly why that was. It was because he wasn’t just marching back to
Galactica
with them.

“Boxey,” Starbuck began, still clutching onto her shroud of affability with
both hands. Then she hesitated, and then she grunted to herself, giving Boxey
the impression that she had just hit the wall in terms of what she was going to
be able to accomplish through simple, casual chitchat. “That… would work for
me, but… look, I don’t know that Admiral Adama would be okay with that…”

“Why not?”

Starbuck looked to Helo in what was, as far as Boxey was concerned, a silent
plea for aid because she was running out of things to say.

“It’s going to make us look bad,” Helo said quickly. He wasn’t looking casual
anymore. Now he was sitting upright, his legs no longer crossed at the ankle.

“Look bad how?”

“Because we did a major selling job to the Admiral to enable you to return,”
said Helo. “The whole thing hinged on how important it was for you to come back.
How much you meant to all of us… and us to you. If we go back to the Old Man
now and say that you basically blew us off…”

“I’m not doing that.”

“You pretty much are,” spoke up Starbuck. “Adama didn’t change his mind
lightly. It’s like Helo says. We go back now and tell him you just said you’d
see us when you got around to it, Adama might just go back on his word again.”

“Well, if that happens,” Boxey said confidently, “then you can probably talk
him right back again. You’re good at that, Starbuck. I believe in you.”

“Boxey,” she began.

“I’m not going back now, Starbuck,” Boxey informed her. “You’re welcome to
stay here with me. Or go and tell the admiral I appreciate his changing his
mind, and I’d like to take up the invitation at some future date. You can tell
him that, can’t you?” The problem was that he already knew the answer to it.

And Starbuck didn’t disappoint him. “Yeah. I could tell him that,” she said
slowly. “But…”

It was obvious she didn’t know what to say, so Helo quickly stepped in. “He’d
be insulted.”

“Yes,” Starbuck said urgently. “He’d be incredibly insulted and, you know, we
wouldn’t want to do that…”

Boxey drew himself up. “Maybe some other time.” And suddenly he was out the
door before Starbuck and Helo could even react.

* * *

“Frak!” snarled Kara Thrace as she and Helo leaped up in pursuit of Boxey.

The entire thing had gone exactly according to the worst-case scenario she’d
conjured in her head. The “turnaround” on Adama’s part had been too abrupt.
She’d done far too good a job selling Boxey on the idea that he was going to be
persona non grata
on
Galactica
for the indefinite future. So now,
when she’d shown up in his new backyard and started making nice to him, it was
only natural that it would arouse his suspicions.

His reactions aroused her suspicions as well. He was acting like someone who
thought they might be on to him. On to him as what? As a Cylon, of course. It
could well have been that they’d all been right to be suspicious of him, and now
he was just trying to keep the hell away from them lest his true nature be found
out.

On the other hand, he could just be a scared kid who didn’t want to find
himself stuck back in a cell while a mad scientist—who also happened to be the
vice president—poked and prodded him and pronounced him to be an enemy of all
mankind.

Either explanation made sense. The problem was that she didn’t have the
slightest inkling which was the right one.

She charged out of the sanctum, Helo right on her heels, and then Kara
slammed into what appeared to be a bulkhead, but turned out to be a man. Under
ordinary circumstances, it would have been expected that she would head one way
and he the other. Instead it was solely Kara who ricocheted backward and
stumbled into Helo. It was a small miracle that Helo managed to catch himself
and not tumble over, righting the two of them. The man she’d collided with, in
the meantime, hadn’t budged from the spot at all. He’d tilted slightly but
otherwise held his footing, and was now staring at the two of them with a combination of confusion and suspicion. “Who are you?” he demanded. “What were you
doing in there?”

“Sir, this is military business,” Kara said quickly.

“And this is my ship, making it my business.”

She could have stayed to try and explain things, but Boxey had already
whipped around a corridor and they were in danger of losing him. So Kara made as
if she were about to stand and address the man’s concerns, and suddenly she
bolted right, ducking just under his outstretched arm. It was just enough
distraction that Helo was able to get around him on the other side, and seconds
later they were both pounding down the corridor after Boxey.

They got around the corner just in time to see Boxey vanish overhead.

It wasn’t that he had disappeared into thin air. Rather he had leaped
straight upward, torn off a metal grating accessing an air circulation shaft,
bounded upward once more and slithered away into the narrow confines of the
shaft.

“Frak!” shouted Kara. Helo took two steps in front of her, cupped his hands,
and Kara propelled herself upward and into the shaft. Or at least she attempted
to do so; her head, outstretched arms and shoulders made it through, but that
was as far as she got. She let out a yelp of pain.

“What’s wrong?!” said Helo. “Is he hurting you?!”

“No, you muttonhead! I don’t fit!”

“Are you sure?”

“Well, I
would
if I had no breasts and no hips!” her irritated voice
echoed from above.

“You take a look in the mirror lately?”

Now it was Helo’s turn to shout in pain as Starbuck slammed one of her feet
down on the top of his head.

He stepped back, rubbing where she’d kicked him, and Starbuck dropped back
down to the floor. “We gotta find him.”

“And do what?” demanded an irritated Helo. “It’s not like we can stuff him in
a sack and sling him over our shoulders.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

“He’s
a kid,
Starbuck!”

“In case you’re not paying attention, that’s what we don’t know for certa—”

“Don’t move!”

Kara froze in place as she saw the large man they’d darted past standing a
few feet away He was aiming a gun at them. It looked tiny in his oversized hand,
but that didn’t make it any less threatening. And there were a couple of men
behind him who were also holding weapons aimed straight at them.

Her peripheral vision told her that there were more men at the other end of
the corridor. Starbuck and Helo had been outflanked, encircled from either side.