03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (39 page)

Worse, he knew exactly where she was, but there wasn’t a thing he could do
about it…

Despite the fact that there was hot fire from the Cylon raiders all around
him, his attention drifted briefly to the
Bifrost.

He gasped. He saw that the ship was on collision course with
Colonial One.
But he was too far away to do anything about it, and if he disengaged from
the enemy to attend to it, raiders would get through and manage to jam their
weapons fire right down
Galactica’s
throat.

“
Galactica,
this is Apollo!
Colonial One
in imminent danger from
Bifrost
!” he shouted over his comm unit.

There was a heartbeat of a pause, and then a voice came back—not Dualla’s,
but instead Lee’s father. “We’re monitoring the situation.”

“Monitoring! If they hit—! Permission to engage
Bifrost
—!”

“Negative, focus on Cylons. Starbuck has it in hand.”

Saul Tigh turned and looked in astonishment at Bill Adama as Adama
point-blank lied to his son. Adama shoved the phone down and returned the look.

“She does,” Adama said with simple conviction, without having the faintest
idea why he knew. He turned toward Gaeta and asked, “Mr. Gaeta… how long
until we’re ready to Jump?”

Gaeta help up two fingers to indicate two minutes and said aloud, “Five
minutes, sir.”

Adama nodded and then looked back in bleak frustration at the
Bifrost.
Space was alive with Vipers engaging the Cylons. Even if they tried to fire
directly at the
Bifrost,
they might blow their own Vipers out of the sky.
And if
Colonial One
attempted evasive maneuvers, they could just as
easily steer themselves directly into stray shots from either the Cylon raiders
or even the Vipers. The entire area was too hot.

Plus if the entire fleet Jumped to escape the Cylons and the
Bifrost
was being commanded by hostiles, they very likely wouldn’t make the Jump along
with the rest of the fleet, leaving Kara and Agathon to the nonexistent mercies
of the Cylons.

Come on, Starbuck,
he thought in frustration.

Laura Roslin shoved past the members of the Quorum and went straight up to
Wolf Gunnerson, who was the picture of calm. Two security guards were
approaching him, and he fired them a look that was fraught with danger. “Stay
back!” Laura snapped at them and they halted where they were. She looked up at
Gunnerson and demanded, “Why are you doing this?”

“The Edda must be fulfilled,” he said calmly. “These things don’t happen by
themselves.”

“Yes! They do! Do you think I was trying to
make
myself ill so that I
would fulfill scripture?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Gunnerson. “You didn’t succeed. I shall. My
daughter shall. She’s steering the
Bifrost.”

“And what about the Cylons!” Tom Zarek spoke up angrily.

“They’re crawling all over us out there! Are you working with them, too?”

Wolf Gunnerson said nothing, but merely smiled enigmatically.

The
Bifrost
drew closer.

Boxey eased his way through the duct work with confidence that he knew
exactly where he was going. It wasn’t all that far. He could do this. He had to
do it.

This is it. This has to prove that you’re not a Cylon. That you were just
making yourself crazy over it.

Although… Boomer helped blow up a lot of Cylons before she discovered
what she was. Maybe…

Stop it! Stop it!

He made his way around a curve in the duct and found himself staring down
into the control room. Freya was there, along with Tyr and Fenris. They were
manipulating the controls in the slightly cramped area, and Fenris was keeping a
steady countdown going toward the imminent collision with
Colonial One.
“Eighteen,” he was saying, “seventeen, sixteen…”

No time! No time!

Boxey brought both his hands down upon the grillwork and slammed it as hard
as he could. The panel, and he, crashed through to the floor. He was up on his
feet in a second, and he locked eyes with Freya Gunnerson.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a gun.

Boxey’s head snapped around and he saw the locking mechanism on the door. He
lunged toward it. The first shot from Freya’s gun slammed into his right
shoulder and he cried out. He heard her shout “Get him!” and Tyr and Fenris were
coming at him. He willed the pain away, stumbled fell toward the locking mechanism, and another shot struck him in the chest. As he fell, his
fingers slammed against the lock, twisting it open, and then he hit the floor
and the last thing that went through his mind was
If this doesn’t prove it,
nothing will,
and then everything went black.

“It’s going to hit!” screamed Sarah Porter.

Laura Roslin looked out a viewing port. She could practically see the rivets
in the
Bifrost
’s hull.

“It’s for the best,” Wolf Gunnerson said coolly.

She fired him a glance of utter contempt. “Frak you,” she said, which was
hardly the most eloquent of final words, but certainly as fitting as any.

The door slid open and Starbuck, her gun in her hand, shoved Jolly aside and
was the first one in.

Boxey inadvertently saved her life, because Freya Gunner-son was aiming her
weapon straight at Starbuck and Starbuck tripped over Boxey’s prostrate body.
She went down and Freya’s shot went wide, glancing off Jolly’s body armor. The
impact staggered Jolly but didn’t take him down.

Starbuck hit the ground, fired once, and her shot lifted Freya up, blew her
off her feet and sent her slamming against the far bulkhead. The sheer impact
held her there for a moment, and then slowly she slid down the wall, leaving a
trail of blood behind her.

Tyr’s gun was already out and Fenris was starting to pull his. Zac stepped
out from behind Jolly and fired twice, both times with deadly accuracy. The
first show sent Tyr’s head exploding in a shower of blood, and Fenris was just
starting to bring his weapon to bear when he was shot square in the chest, the impact
spinning him around like a top. He went down looking profoundly confused.

Colonial One
loomed before them.

“Helo!”
she shouted.

Helo vaulted over the fallen bodies and grabbed the controls. There was no
time for anything fancy. His hands flew over the controls and then angled the
Bifrost
up, up and over
Colonial One.

“This is gonna be close,” he muttered.

He was right. The underside of the
Bifrost
banged against the top of
Colonial One,
and there was an ear-splitting scraping as the two ships
slid against each other. It seemed to go on forever, and suddenly they were
clear.

Helo grabbed the nearest phone.

Adama had been watching the inevitable collision of the
Bifrost
and
Colonial One
with his heart in his throat, and for just a split second, he
thought his confidence in Starbuck had been misplaced. And then he saw the
Bifrost
suddenly change course, and the two ships slid one against the
other, leaving behind a nasty scrape but nothing that appeared—at least from
this distance—to structurally threaten either vessel.

“Admiral!” Dualla suddenly shouted, her headset wrapped around her ears,
“Helo reports
Bifrost
in friendly hands!”

Relief pounded through Adama, and then he pointed at a screen where the
Vipers could clearly be seen battling the enemy and made a “circle” gesture with
his finger to indicate that the ships should be rounded up.

Nodding her understanding, Dualla immediately sent out the recall code, and the Vipers peeled off and barreled back toward the
Galactica
as fast as they could go.

Everyone in the conference room, with the exceptions of Laura Roslin and Wolf
Gunnerson, shouted in fear as the two ships banged up against each other. They
staggered, thrown about by the impact, and suddenly there was nothing. The
vessels were clear. The hit had not been direct at all, but instead merely a
glancing blow.

Laura Roslin had the distinct pleasure at that point of seeing the air appear
to escape from Wolf Gunnerson. As if he’d been hit squarely in the
face—something that Laura wouldn’t have minded doing at that point—Wolf gasped,
“What… happened? Where did… how…?” He looked at Laura as if he expected
her to share his sense of barely contained outrage. “This shouldn’t be! The Edda… it was clear! It was all clear, right there!”

“Don’t believe everything you read,” Laura told him.

D’anna couldn’t believe it.

Space twisted and turned around them and seconds later the entire fleet was
free of the Cylon attack. Except that shouldn’t have been the case. They should
have found themselves, yet again, facing down a Cylon ambush, one that would
have most likely been the final ambush they would ever have to deal with.

Instead they were free and clear. Space around them was devoid of any Cylon
raiders, and a ragged cheer went up from the members of the Quorum.

Sons of bitches,
she thought. Her mind racing, she put together what must have happened and realized that Adama’s people must have discovered
the bug planted in Gaeta’s hand. She wasn’t especially concerned that it would
lead back to her: Humans were so routine in pressing the flesh of their hands
against each other that there was no way Gaeta would associate it with her,
especially since it hadn’t gone active until some time later as a failsafe
measure.

She waited for Gunnerson to make some sort of violent play. The man was,
after all, twice as large as anyone there. He could easily have killed several
of the Quorum members before he was apprehended. But he did no such thing;
instead he surrendered meekly to the security officers who approached him,
keeping their guns leveled at him. He seemed bewildered, frustrated, utterly
perplexed that matters had not turned out exactly as he had expected them to. He
acted as if… as if his gods had abandoned him, and without their support, he
had no idea what he was supposed to do or how he should proceed.

Humans,
she sighed to herself. It was a source of utter mystery to her
that they could be simultaneously so strong and so weak all at the same time. It
was that lack of consistency that would ultimately be their undoing, just as it
was their total consistency that would assure the Cylons of their eventual
triumph.

Just not today. Today, she had a story to cover. God knew it wasn’t the story
she’d wanted, but as Wolf Gunnerson was finding out, even the stories you thought
you could count on the most didn’t always come out the way you were expecting
them to.

The botanical garden on
Cloud Nine
had been cleared out of civilians.
Stern-faced soldiers had withstood the confused protests from various residents
of the space-going garden who wanted to know why it was that—especially after
enduring yet another harrowing encounter with the Cylons—they weren’t being
given the opportunity to take some rest and relaxation in what was easily the
most beautiful piece of territory still in existence. The colonial marines had
offered no explanations, but instead had simply apologized for the inconvenience
in a way that indicated they really weren’t all that sorry about it all.

None of the stragglers or complainers saw the slight woman who was whisked
past, keeping her head low, wearing nondescript clothes and a wide-brimmed hat
that covered her face. They were far too concerned with their own frustration.

So it was that Sharon Valerii walked through the gardens of
Cloud Nine
undisturbed and unobserved. Actually, “unobserved” might not have been the most
accurate way to describe it, for there were sniper scopes aimed at her head if
she engaged in the slightest untoward action. She was all too aware of the potentially
fatal surveillance, and had no intention of trying any sort of stunt. If nothing
else, she owed it to her baby to do everything she could to survive.

She had her shoes off, and was enjoying the sensation of grass under her bare
feet. It was new for her. The time she’d spent on Caprica in Helo’s company had
been mostly taken up with staying on the run—or at least putting up appearances
of staying on the run—and she hadn’t had time to enjoy the simple pleasures that
nature offered. Of all the crimes that the Cylons had committed against
humanity, she had to think that banishing them from the embrace of nature had to
be far greater than simply blowing them into oblivion. She was willing to allow
for the notion that the humans might have disagreed on the matter.

Sharon sensed that someone was coming before she actually saw her. She
stopped where she was in the vast open field and waited as the woman approached
her. Even before the newcomer drew within range of her, Sharon knew that it was
Laura Roslin. She felt a warning of alarm; she was concerned that this was some
sort of trick and they were planning to gun her down while claiming that she was
making an attempt on the life of the president. Because of that worry, she stood
completely stock still, her arms at her sides, determined to make not the
slightest gesture that could be misinterpreted. If they were going to shoot her
down, then it wasn’t going to be for anything that anyone could claim was
self-defense. It would be indisputably murder. Not that she thought they would
be unwilling to resort to that, but that was going to be what was required of
them.

Laura Roslin drew within about ten feet of her, well out of arm’s reach, and
then stopped. It seemed odd to see someone dressed in such a stern suit standing there in such a natural environment.

The two of them faced each other silently for a time. Sharon knew perfectly
well if she made the slightest movement toward Laura, that a sharpshooter would
drop her before she covered a foot of the distance. But it wasn’t as if she
would have made a move on Laura even if her every gesture weren’t being
monitored by marksmen.