03 - Sagittarius is Bleeding (40 page)

“Still having the dreams?” she asked finally.

“Not recently, no.”

Her hand rested unconsciously on her swollen stomach. “You still accusing my
child of trying to get into your mind.”

“Actually,” Laura said slowly, “it appears it was… something else.”

“Really.”

“Toothpaste.”

Sharon stared at her, not getting it. “I’m sorry… what?”

Laura took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Several members of the
command crew of the passenger ship
Bifrost
attempted to ram
Colonial
One.”

“Freya Gunnerson’s people? Midguardians?”

“Yes. They were shot and killed in the attempt. When shown pictures of the
scene, I recognized one of them—a man named Tyr—as the maintenance man who had
been called in to effect repairs to pipes in my bathroom. As soon as I did,
security came in and removed everything from the bathroom and had it tested for
potential hazards. It turned out that, according to Doctor Baltar, there was a
powerful hallucinogen in the toothpaste. Every time I would brush my teeth, it
seeped in through my gums and…”

“Made you imagine things?”

“So it would seem.”

“So all those accusations regarding my child… they were baseless…?”

“I’m not sure,” admitted Laura. “I’ve been… under the influence… at
other times, and had dreams that contained remarkably accurate visions of the
future. This may be connected to that.”

“Or it may be that you simply imagined the whole thing,” said Sharon.

“Yes. It may be that.”

Laura walked in a slow circle around her, appearing to study her. Sharon
continued to remain right where she was. “I understand you changed your mind
about pursuing legal action.”

“I decided it wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

“Freya Gunnerson is dead.”

Sharon took in this news without the slightest reaction. “Guess I made the
right decision,” she said finally.

“Her father was devastated. Man fell completely apart. He’s in the custody of
the other Midguardians who swear that he and his close associates were acting
without their knowledge. That they had extremist beliefs.”

“Of course they’d say that.”

“You think they’re lying?”

“I think it doesn’t matter what I think.”

Laura made a small
hmm
noise in the base of her throat. Then she said,
“So… this was your deal with the admiral? Getting information from Freya
Gunnerson in exchange for two hours in
Cloud Nine.”

“I wanted my baby to experience this.”

“It’s not born yet.”

“I know. But I’m experiencing it, so the baby will as well. At least, that’s
what I like to tell myself.”

“Was it worth it?” She looked at Sharon askance. “To torment a woman as you
did… just for a few hours outside of a cell?”

“If you’d ever been stuck in a cell as long as I have, you wouldn’t ask that
question.” She hesitated and then added, “But then again… there’s all kinds
of prisons, aren’t there.”

“Yes. And all kinds of prisoners.”

Laura nodded and then turned and started to walk away. She paused and then,
without looking back at Sharon, said, “By the way… it doesn’t change anything.
I still think the baby presents a risk… as do you… I still think that…”
She stopped, cleared her throat, and then said, “But I wanted to say… thank
you for saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” Sharon said without hesitation.

She stood and watched in silence as Laura Roslin walked away, and when she
was gone, Sharon went back to flexing her toes in the grass and smiling.

Starbuck walked slowly along the memorial wall, looking at the pictures of
humans who had died in the Cylon attacks and pilots who had likewise died
defending the remainder of humanity against further assaults. The pictures were
tacked up in no order. When someone wanted to add a photo, they simply put it up
there and it became one of the hundreds of pictures of loved ones.

Little pieces of their lives, caught and isolated and etched on paper. Lives
unfulfilled, each filled with individual promise that would never be met. It was
the single most depressing place on
Galactica.
It was also the most
filled with hope, because as long as there was anyone alive to remember the people up on the wall, then
humanity continued to have a prayer.

She pulled out a very small picture from her pocket. She held it up and
looked at it. It wasn’t an entire picture, exactly. It was a portion of one. It
was considered bad luck to put the image of a still-living person up on the
wall, so she’d had to take the time to do some serious trimming. But she’d
managed it, and now she tacked the picture of Boxey up on the wall. She sighed,
and she waited for her eyes to brim with tears. They didn’t. It made her think
that maybe she just didn’t have any tears left.

“They’re all out? All the bugs?”

Seated in Adama’s quarters, Tigh nodded. Adama had a cup of coffee in his
hand and was sipping it. “All of them,” confirmed Tigh. “Also we swept the
extremities of everyone else in CIC. Gaeta was the only victim.”

“Do we have any idea when a Cylon agent might have slipped that under his
skin, and how they did it?”

“According to Doctor Cottle, considering how miniaturized it was, it could
have been anyone at any time. And Gaeta’s been off ship socializing any number
of occasions, so it could have been any one of a number of places as well.
There’s simply no way to be sure.”

“All right,” Adama said slowly. “We’ll be instituting regular security sweeps
of personnel for potential listening devices.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And Saul,” and he smiled just slightly, “good work.”

“Yeah. I know,” said Saul Tigh, feeling positive about himself for the first
time in a good long while.

* * *

“Toothpaste?”

Number Six laughed out loud as Baltar leaned against one of his lab tables
and smiled serenely. “Yes. Toothpaste,” he replied calmly. “I told her it was the
toothpaste that was causing her… hallucinations. She seemed most grateful.
Even apologized for our little scene in which she made some wild accusations.”

“Too wild. How the hell did she see me?”

“She didn’t,” Baltar replied easily.

“We don’t know that for sure, and we could have a serious problem. As much as
you claim expertise about Cylons, there’s so much about us you don’t know. That
you can barely begin to comprehend. We share thoughts, experiences. That which
one of us knows, others learn of either directly or even through just sensing
it, because we are connected and as one. By having a transfusion of blood from
that baby, it’s not impossible that Roslin is starting to share in that
knowledge. And knowledge is power. She claimed she saw me…”

“She doesn’t know what she saw,” Baltar said with complete confidence.
“Everything’s scrambled up in her brain. Are you ready for this? She claimed she
thought that Sharon Valeria’s unborn baby was playing tricks with her mind. Can
you believe that?”

“Yes. I can, as I’ve already made clear. Furthermore, on some level, you
believe it, too. Or at least you believe it’s possible, if you were willing to
fabricate that nonsense about the toothpaste.”

“I said it because I wanted to throw her off the track, and I succeeded.”

“Did you?”

“Never underestimate the power of placebos. I gave her a reasonable explanation for her hallucinations. That alone will likely be
enough for her to have night after night of blissful sleep. There’s nothing to
worry about.”

Six shook her head. “The woman suspects you, Gaius. Suspects us. Perhaps you
managed to get her to bury it for a short while… but it’s going to resurface.
She is a danger to you… to us… for as long as she’s in power.”

“What would you suggest I do? Assassinate her? Or—even better,” he snickered,
“I could run for president. Win the people’s love and force her out of office.”

He continued to snicker and then noticed she hadn’t joined him.

“It’s a thought,” she told him.

“It’s a stupid thought, and by the way… we had an arrangement.”

“Did we?” she said dryly, one eyebrow raised.

“Yes, one that you’ve never fulfilled. You told me if I did as you asked
regarding those listening devices, you’d tell me your real name.”

“Did I. Oh, yes. I did.”

Slowly she walked toward him, her long legs wildly alluring. She leaned in
toward him and whispered something in his ear. Then she leaned back and smiled.

“Legion?” said Baltar skeptically. “What do you mean, your name is ‘Legion’?”

“Work on it, my dear,” she said, patting him on the cheek. “Work on it.”

Minerva Greenwald sat in the promenade of the
Peacemaker
and found
herself missing Boxey.

The young lady—if a thief and gadabout such as she could possibly be called a lady—had very much enjoyed hanging around with Boxey.
First, he was close to her in age. Second, he had learned extremely quickly from
her, picking up the fine art of everything from cards to petty thievery. She’d
found him an eager student and pleasant companion. But ever since he’d gone off
to live on that stupid ship with that stupid woman, Freya…

“Hey.”

She looked up and gasped in surprise. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, what’re you
doing here?!? I thought you were living over on, whattaya call it? The
Bifrost
?”

Boxey dropped down next to her and smiled readily at her. “I was. But I
decided I didn’t want to stay there.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“Well, for starters, Freya shot me.”

“She
did
?” gasped Minerva. “Wh—why aren’t you dead?”

“Had a piece of metal paneling. Shoved it under my shirt. Protected me. She
didn’t know.”

“Frak! Why did she shoot you?”

“Because she was nuts. I mean, why else would anyone want to shoot me?”

“I should say so! And you’re going to stay here now?”

“Yup. Here with you.”

He draped an arm around her shoulder. He seemed to radiate a quiet confidence
he didn’t have before. “I’m glad you came back,” she said. “It’d have been
terrible if she’d killed you. Unless… y’know… you were one of those
human-looking Cylons. There’s this rumor going around that if you kill them, it
doesn’t matter, because there’s bunches of them.”

“Yeah. I heard that, too.”

“So maybe I should be worried that you’re one of them.”

Boxey laughed. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“I know. It was dumb. Mad at me?”

“Never.”

She nestled in closer to him, and he sat there with a distant look on his
face that she didn’t see, thinking about Cylons, thinking about how they were
all connected, and how things were often not what they seemed… and most of
all, he wondered why he was having the strangest dreams about stone carvings
that were bleeding…

Peter David is the author of dozens of works of fiction, including novels,
comics, and screenplays. He has worked with both Marvel and DC comics, and has
penned many bestselling
Star Trek
books. In addition, he has written for
several television series, including
Babylon 5
and
Crusades,
among
others, and was the co-creator of
Space Cases,
which ran for two seasons
on Nickelodeon. His novels include
Knight Life, One Knight Only, Fall of
Knight, Howling Mad,
and the Sir Apropos of Nothing series. He lives on Long
Island.

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proofing by Undead.