Battlestar Galactica 03 - Resurrection

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Battlestar Galactica Resurrection by Richard Hatch
PROLOGUE
The void is full of death and dying.
A stinger from the great Chitain warship, easily twice the size of a battlestar, whips past Apollo's Viper,
just missing him and destroying two other fighters. He prays to the spirit of his father and he prays to the
Lords of Kobol—he prays to anyone who will listen—to just see them through this massacre, because he
knows it's going to take a stack of miracles to survive this day, much less win it.
As he thinks that, the tip of the stinger glows ruby-red and discharges a deadly laser blast, vaporizing
half a dozen Vipers; the brightness of the blast is imprinted on his retinas, even though his Warrior's helm
automatically opaques when the flash of laser fire is too bright, and for a moment, Apollo is blind. In
battle, a moment is all it takes to end up dead.
He knows his Viper is in the sighting hairs of a Chitain fighter, and his vision is coming back, but slowly.
Too slowly. He's going to have to fire blind. Apollo remembers the position of each of the nearest
fighters, Viper and Chitain alike, before the searing light from the laser temporarily stole his sight, and he
trusts to his senses. He's a Warrior, after all, and he has been trained all his life for every eventuality. All
of this races across his mind in a micron, and his thumb stabs the turbolaser.
In his shimmering, dancing vision, the Chitain craft erupts in a fire-flower, and Apollo offers a quiet
prayer of thanks.
But this battle has been raging on and on for what feels like—may well he—centons, and there seems no
end in sight. They've never faced anything quite like the Chitain before: a race so alien and warlike and
fearsome as to make the Cylons seem civilized. Like the Cylons, the Chitain want to become the only
sentient lifeform in their sector, even if that means eliminating everyone and everything else.
If not for the intercession of the colonials' valiant ally, the Sky, this story may end quite differently; even
so, it still ends badly.
The Chitain dreadnought, itself almost indestructible, is surrounded by a nearly impenetrable forcefield. It
is only by staying close to the ship's underbelly and harrying away at it, like skreeters on the back of a
bova, that the Vipers have any hope at all, for the Chitain can't turn their weapons after the Warriors
without destroying their own ship.
It is all chaos and confusion; red beams sizzle from a hundred different fighters, and the war-world's
stinger tendrils answer with their own deadly voice. But the concentrated assault is working; the Chitain
dreadnought is in trouble and the aliens know it. Like a mortally-wounded animal, the great mechanical
beast is going to take down as many of its attackers as possible, and it looks like Apollo is going to be
first.
Frak,he thinks, and grits his teeth, waiting for the inevitable blast from the onrushing Chitain
fighter .
The blast comes not from the fighter, butisthe fighter, vaporizing in a spray of brightly-burning fuel,
then winking out. It's Starbuck, of course, there to save him as he's always been .
Apollo heaves a sigh of relief, more like a laugh, and he tells Starbuck he's going to buy him a tankard of
grog in the aft ODOC. But Starbuck says, "Don't you remember? That's not the way it happened at all."
And he's right, it doesn't end like that, not even anything close to it; this is nothing more than wishful
thinking and rewriting the ending to be more palatable than the truth was, because a moment later,
Starbuck's Viper is caught in the rippling fireball of the warship, the size of a small planet, as it explodes.
The shock waves spread out like circles in a pond, shattering everything they touch. The Sky don't even
try to outrun the spreading death, but accept it as part of the endless cycle, the way of the universe.
Everything happens fast after that, but the image of Starbuck, slumped forward in his fire-blackened,
shredded Viper, never seems to leave Apollo's vision, neither waking nor dreaming.
The colonial fleet has suffered devastating losses, more than half their force of Warriors and starfighters,
and thirty-seven vessels, including the Agro-2. Devastating… but not nearly as devastating as seeing his
oldest friend, closer than any brother, closer than his own brother, lying in his med-berth, kept alive only
by machines. Starbuck's uniform is all but melted to his body, and his flesh is blackened, cracked, with
crazy zigzags running off in every direction, as if his skin is a sun-blistered mud-flat. There's been massive
cranial trauma, and there's no way to know if Starbuck will ever awaken again. If not for the slow and
labored rise and fall of his chest, anyone would think Starbuck a corpse.
Now Apollo is standing at another bedside, this time his father's, and he is saying his silent goodbyes as
Commander Adama slips away. And even through this, Apollo cannot express his feelings, except for
perhaps an unusual brightness in his eyes, and the unusually-stern set of his jaw. There are so many things
he wants to say, and yet, he says nothing. After all, he is like his father, and Adama knows the things
Apollo feels, even if neither one can exactly say them. Knowing is not quite the same as being told, but it
will just have to do.
So he watches him go, and a world ends for Apollo, the way a world always ends when a father dies.
Athena, much closer to her emotions than her brother, buries her face in his chest and weeps openly.
Apollo gives her his strength to draw from; he's good at that. He's just not so good at expressing his
emotions.
They stand that way for a long time, neither speaking, Athena's sobbing is the only sound in the room.
He doesn't hear Cassiopeia enter the room, but she must have, because she's asking him how he could
let this happen.
Apollo shakes his head; he doesn't understand. "It was his time,"he answers . "There was nothing I, or
anyone else, could do."
"Liar!"she shouts, and her vehemence rocks him back on his heels. For a moment, anger flares in
him, one of the few emotions he can show, but that anger leaves him in a sudden wash, because
when he looks past Athena, past Cassiopeia, he sees the funeral bier and the body resting in state
upon it. He knows immediately it is not Adama because there are none of the ceremonial
trappings as befits a man of the commander's station, and Apollo's heart breaks into a wild,
galloping rhythm .
Now that he thinks about it, itcouldn'tbe Adama, because their father died almost a yahren ago.
Apollo is a strong man; he thinks he has enough strength within him that he can loan it out to
anyone who needs it, and now, when he really couldborrow some of that steel from Athena, she's
not there. Neither, for that matter, is Cassiopeia. He's alone, and he has a bad feeling he's about
to find out just how alone he really is, because the one he's always been able to draw strength
from is Starbuck. They are always therefor one another, and only a terrible catastrophe could
prevent that. Apollo feels a catastrophe is imminent, the way bova and avions can predict an
oncoming storm .
Apollo takes a step closer, and then another; it doesn't seem that he's willing his feet to take him to the
funeral bier so much as he's simply unable to stop their advance. He stands at the open casket for what
seems like forever, but he knows it's not more than a few seconds, and at last he looks down.
His heart, racing out of control just a moment before, seems to stop beating altogether and he is hot and
cold, all at once, because it'snotAdama lying before him, but Starbuck, still clothed in his melted
uniform, his flesh black and blistered .
Apollo hears a low, wretched moan from somewhere in the room but he ignores it and lightly touches
Starbuck's lifeless cheek, causing a bit of his charred flesh to flake off. He's always been a strong man,
but he can't prevent that low, anguished cry that escapes his throat or even the tear that falls.
The sound of his own misery woke him.
Apollo blinked, looked around his darkened chambers, caught somewhere in the borderless place
between waking and dreaming, confused by the morbid keening sound that woke him. As in his dream,
he realized that he was the source of that sound, giving time an odd sense of folding back upon itself. And
then the entire dream came flooding back, too much like a premonition, and his heart smashed against the
walls of his chest like an avion banging against the bars of its cage.
It only a dream, of course, but Apollo still caught himself glancing quickly around the darkened cabin, as
if the funeral bier would somehow, illogically, materialize in the room with him.
"Commander?"
The door to Apollo's sleep-chambers whisked open and Gar'Tokk bustled in, the muscles of his big
frame coiled and ready for action. The Borellian Noman palmed the lights, filling the cabin with a cool,
efficient, shadowless glow.
"Gar'Tokk?" Apollo murmured, his voice still thick with sleep, his eyes squinted against the light.
"What?"
"I heard you cry out," the Borellian explained, relaxing a bit, but his eyes still surveyed the room for signs
of hidden treachery. "And, since you did not retire for the night with female companionship, I assumed
your moan was not one of pleasure."
Apollo allowed himself a slight chuckle. "I'm fine," he told his bodyguard. Gar'Tokk's thick, beetled
brow creased slightly. "Just a nightmare."
He threw his warmers back and swung his legs over the edge of his sleeping module to the floor.
The Noman frowned. "The last time I heard anyone moan like that," Gar'Tokk said, "was a human
warden we tortured.Nomen ," he added pridefully, "suffer their pain with silent dignity."
Apollo smiled and said nothing.If you only knew , he thought.If you only knew .
CHAPTER ONE
THEY PRESSED on through the endless darkness, aiming toward the light of distant stars and the hope
of better days. Hope was fading, and the stars whose light they followed doubtlessly long ago went nova.
They were steering their lives by things that no longer existed, the light of forgotten days cast by stars that
no longer gave light. No one dared think such things, of course; that would be too much like admitting
defeat.
So, they pressed on, although there were fewer of them to do so, now.
The battle with the Chitain and the Cylons had cost the colonial fleet terribly, in terms of lives lost and
lives ruined. There were very few whole family units aboard the rag-tag fleet; so many fathers died yahren
ago, during the first Cylon raid, leaving behind women and children—children, grown now to young
manhood and the age of their fathers when they perished, leaving behind their own women and children.
Without fathers, or mothers, these children grew up wrong, and hard, and fast, and without much respect
for anything or anyone. They were not much better than urchins, living in corridors and crawlspaces
instead of streets and alleys, a whole subculture that existed, but no one looked at too closely. Some of
these children, those old enough to be inducted, were given the choice by the council whether they would
spend time in the brig for their crimes, ranging from theft to assault, or be conscripted into the military and
became Warriors. Some disappeared, back into the hidden world of the poor and neglected; others
chose prison, and still others chose the way of the Warrior.
Theirs was a terrible life; but, for some, it was the only life they had ever known. For some, it might be
the only life they would ever know.
Still, there was some faint, small glimmer of hope—the chance that the planet Kirasolia might have once
been visited by the Thirteenth Tribe, and it was toward this distant rumor of a world they journeyed.
They pressed on… but more of them began to wonder why.
It isn't fair, Apollo thought. He wasn't the first person to arrive at this conclusion, nor would he likely be
the last. It was a destination everyone reached, sooner or later: it was simply through a path paved with a
matter of differing events that made the journey short or long.
He looked again at the comatose figure of Starbuck, so still and so…lifeless . It was hardly a word
anyone who knew him would have associated with Starbuck, but that was the word. His external injuries
had healed, sped along their way by the med-berth in which he slept without waking these past weeks,
but the most severe damage was internal.
Cranial pressure in Starbuck's skull had reached critical dimensions, necessitating a craniotomy to relieve
the fluid build-up before the pressure squeezing his brain could render irreversible damage. The signs of
the surgery had already healed, but nothing else had changed about Starbuck's condition. He slept on like
a character from some long-ago children's fairy tale, neither dead nor alive in his glass coffin; but what
would it take to wake him?
Apollo wished he knew.
Starbuck's was the only med-berth still occupied following the battle with the Chitain; all the rest who
had been injured had either healed, or…
But there would not be anor for Starbuck. People like Starbuck did not die, not like this, anyway. He
was always beating impossible odds, and what was more impossible than this?
"What did I get you into now?" Apollo said, softly. There was no answer, of course, except for the flat,
idiotping of the heart and brain monitors to which Starbuck was attached. They were impartial; they
didn't care that they were recording the slow, winding down of a human life.
Apollo was unsure how long Cassiopeia had been standing there, to his side and slightly behind, but he
was glad she was. After a while, she placed her hand on his shoulder, and, after a while, Apollo placed
his hand upon hers.
"I suppose it would be pointless to tell you to get some rest?" Cassie asked the commander. It was not
so much a question as it was a statement of fact.
Apollo smiled crookedly. "I might ask you the same thing, Cass," he said. "How long have you been
here, yourself?"
"Oh, no," she said. "That isn't a fair question. I'm here in the capacity of attending med, whereas you…"
Apollo glanced back at her over his shoulder. "We're both here for the same reason, Cass."
She let her hand fall away from his shoulder. There was nothing Cassie could do for Starbuck, but
perhaps she could still do something for Apollo. Perhaps she could get him to live again before it was too
late. She said, "I don't have an entire Fleet depending on me." Apollo opened his mouth to protest, but
she pressed on. "There's nothing you can do for him that Dr. Wilker can't do better."
"I can be his friend," Apollo answered simply. "I can be here for him, like he was always there for me."
"Cut the felgercarb," she snapped. Apollo could only blink in dumb response to her outburst. "You're
here for Apollo, not Starbuck. You're here because you feel guilty, you're here because you're the great
Adama's son and you think that means you can fix everything. Well, I'm sorry, sweetheart, but there are
some things you can't fix. There are some things you just have to accept."
"How do we know this is one of them until we've tried everything?" he countered. His eyes locked with
hers, and it was she who looked away this time. Apollo stood quietly for several moments beside his
oldest friend's med-berth, clearing his mind of clutter and anger. When he opened his eyes again, they
were clear and focused. He placed his hands lightly against Starbuck's temples and let his consciousness
expand in waves, as if his mind were being broadcast on a wideband frequency. And then, Apollo
narrowed his thoughts to a wedge, like probing tendrils, and he felt his consciousness slipping into
Starbuck's slumbering mind.
Apollo's consciousness skimmed like the shadow of a cloud passing over a lake, a dark and bottomless
lake, tumbling down and down, into unrelieved, unbroken blackness and silence. Apollo probed deeper,
but the jet blackness made it difficult to tell just how deep he had gone, and still there was no sign of
Starbuck's own consciousness.
Deeper...just a little farther , Apollo promised himself;just a little more, and then, if there's no sign
of him, I'll turn back .
And down his consciousness tumbled, pressing on until he began to feel the crushing, overwhelming
weight of despair and hopelessness, the cold of the void, as if Starbuck's mind were at absolute zero.
Nothing could exist here, no thought could resonate, no memory survive. It was the cold of the void, the
cold of the waiting grave.
Are you there? Apollo's mind-thought called out, the sound of it tiny and swallowed by the greedy
darkness.Starbuck, can you hear me? Please, if you can hear me, just answer me, just give us
something, some hope—
And then he was racing toward a distant pinprick of light, far away, the light of other days, racing faster
and harder, and for a wild, heady moment, Apollo thought he had found Starbuck, buried alive in a
mental cave-in.
"Apollo?"
Starbuck—?
"Apollo, can you hear me? Apollo—"
Starbuck, where —
Suddenly, the light exploded all around him, momentarily blinding him, making him cry out in pain.
"—can you hear me?"
"Yes, of course I can hear you, but where—?"
The world swam back into a gauzy sort of focus, the light so bright after the long, deep darkness that it
made Apollo's eyes tear and sting, but it was only the light of the med-bay, and the voice was only the
voice of Cassiopeia. Her face, doubled and trebled by the prism of tears through which Apollo viewed it,
was etched with concern. Apollo palmed his eyes dry, looked at Cassie, questioningly.
"Why did you make me break contact?" Apollo asked, anger alloyed with confusion. "I almost—"
"You almost got lost inside his mind," Cassie finished, forcefully. Apollo frowned because he knew she
was right. Hedid almost get lost there, in the darkness, where Starbuck was also lost. Lost and alone and
probably dying.
"I'm all right," Apollo argued. "I would have been fine."
"Who said anything about you?" Cassie asked. "Of course you would have been fine; you're always fine.
But what about Starbuck? The man has abrain trauma! What do you think fracking around with his mind
is going to do to him?"
Cassie stood over Starbuck and took his hand in hers, as she had done countless times since she first fell
in love with him all those yahren ago, as she had done so many times recently as she kept watch beside
his med-berth.
She realized she was angry with Apollo for getting Starbuck into the one bad scrape it didn't look as if
he was going to escape; she was furious with the situation that had brought them to this. She cursed her
helplessness and she cursed anyone who couldn't help Starbuck. She was a doctor who couldn't save the
one she loved. What had she changed her entire life for, if she still had no control over it? And she was
angry because blind, stumbling anger always attends loss, the unwanted guest that always arrives at the
worst times.
"You're not the only one in pain, Cassiopeia," Apollo said, gently. After a moment, he circled her and
Starbuck's hands with his, but neither seemed to notice. "Don't give up." Even Apollo wasn't sure to
whom he was speaking. All of them, he supposed, himself included.
"I'm glad you're here for him, Cassie," Apollo said. "I know this has to be especially difficult for you,
given your history with Starbuck."
"I used to think there was nothing harder than watching someone you love fall in love with someone
else," she answered, ruefully. "But, what did I know?" Cassopeia glanced back at Apollo, a sad smile on
her full, lovely face.
"You've suffered a lot of losses," she said. "I haven't had to deal with this before, on such a personal
level. How do you get over it?"
That was a good question. It was not that he didn't have emotions, it was just that he was quite good at
ignoring them. He had dealt with first Zac's death and his mother's, and then Serina's and Adama's by
walling his emotions into a neat little pen. Occasionally one would escape, and he would regret that, of
course, because they always got hurt whenever they did. Apollo would recapture his stray feelings, cage
them, and keep a tighter guard over them. But what worked for him was not necessarily a good road for
Cassie to embark upon. One look at her face, open and oddly hopeful and full of pain told him that.
"A day at a time," he said. "A tear at a time, but just know there will always be one more." Apollo
looked at Starbuck, so still and too much like his dream, and said, "But, get over it? You never really get
over it, you just… get by."
Cassie studied him for a moment, surprised to hear Apollo admit how deeply hurt he had been, and still
was. He was like a thermos—you could never tell, just by looking, whether his contents were hot or
cold. For the moment, she didn't see Apollo as the supreme commander of the fleet, or the indestructible
man she had always thought he was. For the moment, he was human, and vulnerable, and she, as well as
anyone, knew how hard it was to be that. But he had done it for her. "It never bothered you, did it?
What I used to do."
"Socialator?" Apollo asked, and crinkled his nose. "It's not what you do that makes you who you are. I
always thought you were a good person, Cassie, and I always will."
"I think you are, too, Apollo," she said, and smiled again, but this time it was not so sad, just wistful.
Apollo's comm-line, clipped to his belt, beeped with the same maddening calm as the monitors keeping
track of Starbuck's vital signs, even though at this point they were somewhat less than vital. The
commander unclipped the small, hand-held device and opened the frequency. "Commander Apollo," he
said, tersely.
"Apollo," Athena's voice greeted him across the open link. "President Tigh and I would like to see you
on the bridge."
He wanted to tell his sister to handle it, just handle whatever it was herself, but being commander was
not about what Apollo wanted; it was about what had to be done, personal pain aside.
"On my way," he managed, and flipped the voice-pad closed with a flick of his wrist. Apollo clipped the
communicator to his belt once more and turned to go. He paused a moment in the doorway to look back
where Cassiopeia still stood, Starbuck's hand in hers.
"I'll let you know," Cassiopeia began, so softly at first that Apollo thought she was speaking to Starbuck;
it was only when she looked up and met his eyes that he knew otherwise. "If there's any change, I'll let
you know." Apollo managed a smile, but Cassie didn't see it; she had already turned back to Starbuck,
studying the face she knew so well and feared she would soon never see again.
If watching a loved one die is one of the hardest things one can do, how much harder is it, then, when
one has still not made peace with one's feelings for the dying?
Dalton sat alone in the hard, steel chair in the waiting hall just outside the med unit. She had been there
since before Apollo arrived, and sat, unmoving, still. Hers was a complex relationship with her father,
Starbuck, and now, faced with his imminent departure from this life, she felt… well, she was unsure of
her feelings.
She loved him, of course; he was her father, and Dalton knew Starbuck loved her and her mother,
Cassiopea, the best he could. Dalton was coming to understand these things about her father; it was her
own unresolved feelings of love and resentment she was finding so difficult to understand.
And she wondered, not for the first time and not for the last, if Starbuck had marked her more than
either of them could guess. Would she be as poor at giving and accepting love as her father? She loved
Troy, she supposed, what was therenot to love? Troy—Boxey , as he used to be called a long, long time
ago—was her first great flame, the grace note that provided calm in the cacophony of her life, but just
lately…
Dalton glanced up, saw Apollo standing near her. She gave a start, fear scouring the inside of her brain,
because the grim look on Apollo's face made her wonder if her father had slipped quietly away while she
sat here, trying to unravel the scattered and tangled skein of her emotions.
"Don't give up," he offered. It was the same advice he had given Cassie, but it seemed the only
reasonable thing to say at such a time.
It took a moment for the meaning of these words to penetrate Dalton's whirling thoughts, and she uttered
a hitching, ragged, laughing sigh of relief.
"Everything all right?" Apollo asked, and stepped a little closer. He felt a knot in the pit of his stomach
when he realized just how much of Starbuck he could see in Dalton's features, and he wondered why he
never noticed that before.
"What a mess, huh?" she answered, but she wasn't sure if she meant Starbuck's condition, or her own.
Both, probably.
"If you need to talk…" Apollo began.
She guessed she did, and if anyone knew Starbuck well, it was Apollo. But before she could speak,
Sheba and Boomer appeared in the doorway. It was one thing to unburden herself to Apollo; she might
have been able to do that—just—but the moment had passed now, and Dalton stood quickly, unable to
look at Apollo or the others. "Maybe later," she said, and walked briskly from the waiting hall.
I'll look after her, old friend, Apollo promised Starbuck in his thoughts, and knew when he did so that he
had all but given up on Starbuck's recovering. Who was Apollo to tell Starbuck's family not to give up
when he had already done so?
Grief came at him from a thousand different directions at once, like a rabid lupus, cutting and tearing at
him with a whirlwind of fang and claw. It was impossible to defend himself from the savaging he was
suffering; all he could do was bear it with quiet grace and wait for it to get tired of hurting him. The Lords
of Kobol must have been cruel, indeed, he thought, to keep visiting such ruin and misery upon their race.
How much longer would they all have to be tested before the gods decided they were, at last, worthy of
their loving kindness?
"Apollo?" Sheba began.
The commander squared his shoulders and set his jaw, and managed to say, "I'm needed on the bridge,"
without his voice cracking too much. More than that would have been impossible. He turned and walked
from the waiting hall before anyone could ask anything else, into the main corridor beyond, where
Gar'Tokk was patiently waiting.
The Borellian Noman was perfect company for Apollo's present mood: Gar'Tokk would not ask the
commander how he was, or if there was any sign of improvement in Starbuck. Gar'Tokk was simply
present in Apollo's life in the capacity of bodyguard, but even the best protector couldn't defend Adama's
son from the ache in his soul, or the sharp, wicked blade of his own thoughts.
The mood on the bridge was as somber as Apollo's own.
Athena glanced up at Apollo's entrance, a questioning look on her face; it was the same look she always
had whenever he visited Starbuck, and, as always, his grim expression answered her quite well. Anyone
watching might have thought it was the telepathic link the children of Adama, pure-blooded Kobollians,
shared, but it was nothing more prosaic than the secret shorthand language of siblings who had grown up
so close together.
"Glad you could take time away from your medical duties to join us, Commander," President Tigh said;
it was Tigh's way of letting his old friend know he was displeased with Apollo's behavior. Apollo glanced
from Athena to Tigh and back to Athena.
She said, "We're a little…concerned … about the time you spend away from your post, when there is
so much to be discussed, and decided."
Apollo felt himself bristle at their rebukes, but maintained his calm. "I understand I've been a little
distracted, lately," Apollo answered, spreading his hands expansively; "but I have full faith in your and
President Tigh's abilities to lead in my times of absence from the bridge."
"But the people," Tigh said, pulling himself up, "don't seem to share that faith inyou , Commander."
Apollo wiped his palm down his face; was this day really happening? He felt safer showing his pique
than he did his pain, and felt his cheeks flushing red and hot. Athena interjected herself between the two
men, and outlined the facts. It was nothing Apollo didn't already know, but it was a way of defusing a
potentially volatile situation. No matter what, she would always rush to her brother's aid, even if she
didn't always agree with him.
"The entire fleet is running out of energy stores and other vital resources," she said; before Apollo could
interrupt, she pressed on. "Seditionist and other adversarial factions aboard the fleet—those who never
looked with much favor upon you,or me—have become more vocally strident than ever in their
opposition to us. There have already been several outbreaks of violence over dwindling food supplies,
but nothing that we haven't been able to contain…so far ." She added this last with great emphasis.
"The violence can only get worse," Tigh added, grimly. "By traveling such a long distance to Kirasolia,
we risk losing more people to starvation, more ships to energy depletion."
"I thought it was understood," Apollo responded. "We must buy ourselves more time. The Cylons know
how badly damaged our fleet is. They'll expect us to find a planet on the holocube in closer proximity
than Kirasolia. We cannot afford to make any more mistakes."
"Yes, Apollo," Athena responded with a curt nod. "We cannot afford to make any more mistakes.
We're already so desperately low on fuel and resources that if anything more goes wrong, we will not
make it to Kirasolia, or any other planet. Ask yourself this, Apollo: Are you sure you want to risk losing
everything by trying to second-guess the enemy?"
"They're Cylons," Apollo answered. "They're predictable. 'Exterminate the humans.' There's not much
margin for error in that edict, is there? They're hot on our trail and closing in on us." He looked from Tigh
to Athena; he could tell, although they might not want to admit it, that they knew he was right. "We've
seen firsthand the buildup of Cylon forces in these outlying quadrants. They shouldn't have much trouble
finding us if we attempt to stay too long on any habitable planet. We'll be trapped then, no hope of
defending ourselves or escape."
"And what happens when we deplete our fuel stores questing after this fabled planet?" Tigh snapped.
"What happens when half our fleet is dead in space? It seems to me you're doing the enemy's work for
them, Commander."
For a moment, Athena expected Apollo to boil over with anger, but he chuckled instead at the
foolishness of the accusation. Tempers were short, he knew; it was not the time to engage in a shouting
match, and besides, he knew Tigh's concerns about the welfare of the fleet were well-founded. He could
hardly be angry with him for that, especially when Apollo, himself, had similar worries. The gods knew, it
was indeed a possibility the fuel reserves would exhaust themselves before the wanderers reached
Kirasolia. That was logic talking, but Apollo's focus was on something that had little to do with that
concrete mindset: he had faith, and his faith told him his way was the correct path. Logic was hard to
refute, but faith was harder still to argue with.
"And let us suppose we do reach Kirasolia," Tigh allowed. "Won't the Cylons simply find us there? How
will Kirasolia be any more defensible than the nearest habitable planet?"
Apollo smiled crookedly; he didn't realize it, but it was the same rogue's smile he'd seen Starbuck flash
countless times before. They were more alike than he knew. "We will be on Kirasolia only long enough
to take on fresh supplies and building materials to repair the damage to our ships," he said.
Tigh looked astonished. Apollo's plan seemed madder by the moment. "We'll have to remain in deep
space while we refurbish our fleet," Apollo said. "That will make us more difficult to locate, buy us more
time to make our repairs and augment our fighter fleet and weapons."
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