CHAPTER TWELVE

 

 

Croft:

Nothing’s so bad it can’t get worse if you apply a little human ingenuity to the situation. We could hear the Cylon fighter in the distance, swooping to ground level, then accelerating upward. There was a phantomlike quality to the sound. The fighter could locate us at any time, and all of us were too cold or injured to move out of its way with any speed.

Boomer tries to get things hopping:

“Okay, everybody out! Now!”

Wolfe scrambles for the hole leading outside, Thane strolls to it. Sorting through the smashed containers, I manage to liberate a number of ice axes, some of the molecular-binding pitons, other odds and ends of climbing equipment. They wouldn’t be enough, perhaps, but we have to salvage as much as possible. Near the gaping hole, while still scrounging for materiel, I stumble across a large figure huddled in the dark. A face, angry, comes into the dim light. Leda.

“I might have expected you to trample me on your way out,” she says.

“I wasn’t on my way out. I was—never mind. I didn’t see you there in the dark.”

“You never did.”

She glares at me, but in her eyes is some delight at scoring her point. Let her have her little triumph. Nothing gained by alienating her any further. If this operation is successful, maybe we can get back together, maybe—ah, it’s no good fretting over futile wishes.

Boomer rushes past us, not seeing myself or Leda.

“I’ll take Vickers,” he says. “Starbuck!” Starbuck pokes his head through the entranceway to the forward cabin. “Give me a hand.”

“I’m trying to remove the communicator,” Starbuck protests. “We’re going to need it.”

“Sorry, you don’t have the time. Captain Apollo thinks they’ve spotted us. That Cylon ship’ll be back for another pass quick as a flash. Give me a hand with Vickers.”

Starbuck comes into the passenger compartment and reaches for Vickers’ feet while Boomer cradles the gunner’s head and shoulders. I hustle toward the exit, immediately feel the harsh sting of fiercely blowing snow against that part of my face that’s not covered by the breather. In spite of the snow and the darkness, the gray-shape of the Cylon fighter is immediately visible hurtling toward us.

“Here he comes!” I shout.

The fighter dips into a strafing run. The fire from its lasers hisses and crackles across the ice field. I dive to the ground, feel the sharp smack of firm ice against my whole body. Behind me, I can hear the other members of the team scrambling out of the shuttle. Looking up, I’m just in time to watch the forward section of the shuttle burst into a bright yellow flame.

As the Cylon fighter slips upward in a loop designed to end in another strafing run, a deep rumble sounds from inside the shuttle. The snow-ram kicking into life. With a loud roar, the vehicle smashes through the side of the shuttle, creating still another large hole. Its sleek black surface streaked by the glow of flames from the burning shuttle, the snow-ram swerves furiously into defensive artillery position. Apollo sticks his head out the snow-ram’s portside window, hollers:

“Starbuck! Get up here!”

“Always in demand,” Starbuck yells as he jumps up on the turret of the vehicle.

The Cylon ship, not expecting to encounter resistance, appears again and initiates its run. Starbuck extends the long barrel of the snow-ram gun, and spinning it around, takes aim on the enemy ship as it approaches. The Cylon fighter’s guns, with their longer range, score a pair of hits on the snow-ram. The cover flies off the vehicle’s external battery. Starbuck seems not to notice. Holding back until the properly timed moment, he stares upward, sighting along the narrow barrel of the gun to the enlarging shadowy form of the advancing ship. Just as I’m about to yell at him to fire, he does. With an ear-splitting howl, he unloads at the swooping Cylon plane. The shots fly straight to their mark. The ship explodes like a meteor cracking apart. We all shield our eyes from the incandescent glare.

Turning the vehicle around, Apollo aligns it alongside the shuttle, whose fire has now dimmed. In the dying light we assemble, at least those of us still conscious do. The snow-ram engine coughs and shakes. Something’s obviously wrong with it.

Suddenly the kid sticks his head out the highside hatchway of the snow-ram and cries out:

“Great shooting, Starbuck!”

From the looks on the face of Starbuck and some of the others, I can tell Apollo and Boomer have forgotten to inform them of Boxey’s presence. When they hear the droid inside start to bark, they all jump, startled at the abrupt sound.

Apollo, cutting off any queries about the presence of the kid and his mechanical pet, tells everyone to crowd around the snow vehicle. As we do, he lights a lamp. I become more aware of the ferocity of the wind as the fire in the shuttle finally flickers out.

“Light the other snow lamp,” Apollo orders. “Keep them shielded.”

Starbuck takes care of the other lamp.

“Crowd as many as possible inside,” Apollo says. “We’ll rotate riding on top. Haals and Wolfe go first.”

Neither Haals nor Wolfe looks like he appreciates the privilege of being first. The wind’s increasing in velocity, while the snow’s back to mere blizzard level. Starbuck hands me his light and everybody starts loading the snow-ram. When the job’s just about done, I become conscious of Thane and Wolfe standing behind me. I turn and face them, after checking that everybody else is still busy with the loading.

“What is it?” I say as quietly and guardedly as I can across the roar of the blizzard.

“You’re not going to guide them across to the mountain?” Thane says. Somehow his quiet voice manages to carry no matter what noise is raging around him.

“We can make it,” I say.

“It’s our chance to make a break.”

Exactly what I suspected. They’ve been cooped up for too long. Their desire for escape has overcome their common sense, and they’re not going to listen to me for long before attempting to flee from the core group.

“A break, eh? To where? We’re stuck on this ball of ice.”

Thane’s obviously been thinking this all out. His answers are ready.

“We can hunt. Build shelter. We’ve been in a lot worse.”

Wolfe moves in closer and whispers in his raspy voice:

“Maybe we can hijack a Cylon transport and make a run for a sun system.”

“Yeah, and maybe we can clip off all the hair on your body, Wolfe, and get rich selling it as animal pelts.” Wolfe looks like he’d rather clip me. “We’re not going to run anywhere. We signed on to blow up that pulsar-type cannon or whatever it is.”

Thane’s eyes narrow, as much a show of emotion as I’ve ever seen him manage at one time.

“You sayin’ you’d crawl up that mountain to get your rank back?”

I want to take that scrawny neck of his in my hands and squeeze it until life comes back into his eyes.

“It’s low-blow time, that right, Thane?”

“Low blows are for people who can fight back. They broke you, Croft. You used to bite, but now you’re toothless. Okay, you stay and wear their choke chain. We’re cutting loose the first chance we get!”

I remember when these guys didn’t used to be so stupid. Thane says they broke me. I’m not sure who they broke. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’ve lost my sense of loyalty, that feeling of companionship we’d all experienced before the platinum raid. But is it disloyal to rank a selfish desire for escape and personal freedom over our duty to save the fleet from certain disaster? It doesn’t seem so to me, and I’m about to tell Thane and Wolfe that, but out of the corner of my eye I can see Apollo walking up to us, the snow crunching under his heavy boots.

“Soon as you’re finished loading,” Apollo says, “we’ll go.”

I glance at Thane and Wolfe. I’m pretty sure both of them have given up on me. Maybe I can convince them later.

“We’re through,” I say to Apollo, and walk off next to the captain, feeling the two pairs of eyes of my former cohorts staring deep craters into my back.

Next to the shuttle wreck, Leda is working furiously on the injured Vickers and Voight. Haals comes out of the shuttle, his arms sliding into the harnesses of a backpack.

“How are they?” Apollo says, crouching by Leda. The look she gives him reminds me of a look she once used to reserve for me. Since she wants so badly to escape, the look is probably phony. Maybe it was always phony.

“They’ll survive,” Leda says, “if we can get them to shelter.”

“Put them inside the ram. There’ll be enough room, with Wolfe and Haals riding on top.”

Wolfe now hovers over all of us, growling:

“I’m not freezing, just so—”

“I said you ride on top,” Apollo says, standing. “That’s an order.”

“I’m not letting any punk of a—”

Wolfe stops suddenly, shoots a dirty look my way. I try to convince him with a shrug that I’m staying out of it. He spins on his heel and strides off. I should warn Apollo, if he hasn’t realized it already, that Wolfe in a belligerent mood is extremely dangerous. But then I’d have to inform on Wolfe about the stolen gun, and what good would telling Apollo anything do? The smug young captain would just mutter he could take care of it, like he always does. I hope someday he comes up against something he can’t take care of. Soon.

We load the two injured men aboard the snow-ram, and Apollo goes to the controls. As I climb into the interior of the vehicle, I can hear Wolfe and Haals as they scramble into position up top.

“Get over!” Wolfe bellows.

“It’s frozen on that side,” Haals complains.

“That’s your problem.”

Let Wolfe be Haals’ problem for a while. I’m getting into the ram and huddling against somebody for warmth, preferably Leda.

Leda, however, has positioned herself between Starbuck and Boomer. She’d probably rather be positioned against the captain, but she’s always smart enough to take pot luck.

We go some distance in silence. Even the garrulous Starbuck stares off into space without talking. Once in a while the kid whispers to the droid, but that’s about all the conversation anybody can work up. We’re all tense. If everything’s been this bad so far, what’s up ahead?—in one way or another, that’s what we’re all thinking, whether our goal is the mountain or escape or a warm place for our mechanized daggit that probably has no sensors for cold anyway.

Suddenly there is the noise of a scuffle above us, then a thump followed by a loud, sharp crackling noise. Without even a cough, the snow-ram engine kicks out, and the vehicle skids a bit across a stretch of ice field.

Apollo is out of his driver seat and outside as soon as the vehicle comes to a stop. I come out right after him, Leda just behind me.

A short distance behind the snow-ram, Haals is lying in the snow, his arms outflung. Wolfe leaps off the top, stumbles, and rolls in the snow. Leda runs to Haals’ prone body, checks him out.

“He’s in bad shape,” she cries back. “Very bad. He might die, looks like.”

“What happened?” Apollo roars at Wolfe.

Wolfe takes a deep breath before snarling his answer:

“He was bawling me out. I told him to get off my back, pushed him a little. He tried to fight back. His feet went out from under him, and he slipped. His torch made contact with that thing there”—Wolfe pointed to the coverless external battery—“then there were sparks all over the place and he fell off the vehicle as it stopped. Your clumsy warrior shorted out the power cells, I guess.”

Starbuck, emerging from the snow-ram interior, seems about to leap on Wolfe.

“I’ll bet he did!”

Apollo holds Starbuck back.

“Stop it! We’ve got enough problems.”

Searching the terrain ahead of me, I see just what I’m afraid to see. I whirl on Apollo, saying:

“We’re going to have more problems if we don’t adjust our breathers to full protective power, and right away. There’s a di-ethene wave building up in this storm.”

“The ram’s powerless without these batteries,” Apollo says. “Do we have time to hide it?”

Finally. He’s learning something, showing enough sense to ask my opinion.

“Do we have a choice?” I say. “Of course we hide it.”

Apollo and I begin to dig into the snow to throw up a wall around the ram to hide it from Cylon eyes. Starbuck and Boomer help Leda carry back Haals to the vehicle. Wolfe sulks for a moment, then joins the digging. Even Thane comes out of his hiding place aboard the snow-ram to make adjustment checks on the breathing gear. For a moment at least we’re all working together, making like a team. For whatever that’s worth.

After the snow wall’s constructed we all huddle together inside the snow-ram for warmth. For now there’s no other course of action. Apollo holds the kid in his arms. The breather mask the kid’s wearing looks too big for him, though Thane’s rigged a couple of extra straps to make it fit better. But it doesn’t look like it’s working so good. At least when he keels over we’ll get an indication of how long the rest of us’ll last. No, that’s an unworthy thought. Where did I become the type who’d let a kid die for any selfish advantage? I glance down at the daggit, huddled against the boy, giving warmth instead of taking it. It’s lucky. It doesn’t even have to wear a breather mask. When we’ve all popped off for good, it can scamper among our bodies.

“How do you feel, Boxey?” Apollo says.

“Just a little cold.”

Apollo pulls the boy even closer to him. It’s not bad seeing a little human affection, even briefly, when you consider the composition of this team. I look over at Leda, who’s deep in some private thoughts of her own. I remember seeing her this way, some time long ago, while she was resting in the saddle of a mountain ridge. I don’t remember where, I don’t remember what took place before or after, I just remember her sitting like that and I remember how much I loved her at that moment. I want to reach over and touch her arm, ask her thoughts, have her nestle close to me—but I know that one move in her direction and she’ll smash her fist into my face and break my jaw.

Starbuck crawls over to me, asks:

“What are our chances?”

Another invocation of my expertise from a Galactica officer. I’m sure gaining in stature around here. Too bad it’s probably too late.

“Depends on how long this storm lasts,” I say, “and if the atmosphere, under the influence of the di-ethene, starts descending to the critical point of the gases composing it. That’s the point when, well, when you can’t really see much distinction on the critical-temperature curve between the gaseous and liquid phases. For our purposes, the air outside turns to liquid. Some call it deathpoint, though the name’s never made much sense to me, since normally you’re pretty dead long before the critical point. That satisfy you?”

“Not much. But thanks anyway.”

“Anytime.”

He crawls away very slowly. The cold’s beginning to affect his muscles. It’s affecting all of us that way. I have to force myself to keep exercising what muscles I can in this cramped sitting position.

The droid suddenly springs away from the kid’s side. Its furry ears point upward. It looks like it’s heard something, though I don’t know what it can possibly hear with that blizzard howling outside. It begins to bark furiously. The kid tells it: Shut up, daggit. Then it breaks for the door. With more strength than I could work up, it forces the door open and bounds out. Starbuck tries to go for the door, but can’t make it.

“I… I can’t move,” he mutters.

“Muffit,” the kid whines weakly. “Muffit! Come back.”

Apollo pulls the kid even closer to him, saying:

“It’s all right, son. Muffit isn’t like us. He can survive di-ethene.”

“Three cheers for Muffit,” I say.

“Will he be back?” the kid says.

“He’ll be back.”

Apollo glances around, then mutters to no one in particular:

“I just hope he doesn’t bring a Cylon patrol back with him.”

I almost wish he does. What good is it huddled inside this broken-down vehicle? The Cylons might just let us have a warm cell before executing us. Be fitting for me, wouldn’t it? Complete the cycle? From warm cell to warm cell. Welcome it. Though I don’t feel so cold anymore. Feel numb. Drowsy. Hey! Stop feeling drowsy. Can’t go to sleep now. Sleep’s death. Won’t let everything end this way. Can’t let it. Won’t. Can’t. It’s not right. Not fair. Not…