CHAPTER
10
Howls of indignation echoed through sickbay. Peter Attis shouted and bellowed and wrenched at his restraints. Kara stood next to his bed, feeling uncertain. One bed over, Alexander twitched quietly in medicated sleep. Dr. Baltar stood to one side, watching with a look of vague distraction. He kept turning his head, as if someone were standing beside him.
“Hold still,” Cottle barked. “You’d think I was pulling out your fingernails.”
“Let me go!” Peter snarled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I just want to draw some blood.” Cottle held up the empty syringe. “See? Simple blood. Just hold still.”
“This was a trick, wasn’t it?” Peter said, eyes wild. “You’re all Cylons. You just made me think I’d escaped, and now you’re playing with me some more.”
“Shut up, Pete,” Kara snapped. “And dump the martyr pose. It doesn’t look good on you.”
He stopped struggling and stared at her. Cottle used the moment to insert the syringe and start drawing blood. Peter winced. “Ow! What the frak—?”
“Peter,” Kara said. “You need to listen to what the doctor is saying. They’ve found a disease that attacks your brain. It makes you babble and shake, and then it puts you in a coma. It started just after you arrived, which probably means you have something to do with it.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t make anyone sick!”
“Not on purpose,” Baltar said from his corner.
“Not on purpose,” Kara agreed, resisting the urge to stroke Peter’s forehead like a concerned wife or mother. She didn’t like seeing him tied down, knew it upset him more than it would most people. “But it’s happening anyway.”
Peter slumped back against the thin mattress of his sickbay bed. Other patients groaned in other beds. A few babbled nonsense. Peter took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm himself.
“The people will recover eventually,” he said.
“What makes you say that?” Cottle asked sharply.
“Because I did. I shook and babbled in a Cylon lab for hours, but I recovered. I told Kara—Lieutenant Thrace—about it. It’s not a disease. It’s a miracle.”
“You’ll pardon me if I don’t completely take your word for that,” Cottle said.
“You’re just prejudiced,” Peter shot back. “Anything that differs from your point of view must be evil or blasphemous.”
“I don’t give a damn what you believe, kid,” Cottle told him. “I believe my tests and my microscope. If they tell me it’s a disease, it’s a disease.”
“Then why am I not sick?” Peter asked pointedly.
“It’s possible,” Baltar put in, “that the Cylons used you to infect the Fleet. You said you spent considerable time in a laboratory, after all. If they wanted you to carry a disease, they would almost certainly want you to be immune so you could spread it as far as possible. Say, for example, by putting on a rock concert?”
And then everything clicked at once. Kara stared down at Peter as the pieces came together, creating a terrible picture she wanted to deny but couldn’t. It was like staring at a picture of a beautiful young woman and abruptly seeing an ugly old crone occupying the same space. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?” she said. “Frak, we should have seen it.”
“Seen what?” Peter asked. The fight seemed to have gone out of him.
“The Cylons created this disease and infected you with it,” Kara said. “Then they showed up at Planet Goop and attacked us with a half-assed force. They wanted to lose—it was the only way to make sure you’d end up here. When I was flying that Cylon raider with the nuke back to the basestar, it sent a signal. We thought it was warning the basestar not to fire on me because that would set off the nuke and destroy the basestar, but that wasn’t it. The raider was telling the basestar to get ready for a big kaboom and make sure that you were on the escape pod. Frak, the Cylons knew from the beginning exactly what was going to happen. Otherwise you and your Mistress Eight wouldn’t have been able to make it to the pod in time. Hell, she must have hit the engines a few minutes before the explosion. Otherwise you’d have been too close to survive.”
“I… no,” Peter said. “That can’t be. Why would they kill hundreds—thousands—of their own kind on purpose, even to destroy the Fleet?”
“Cylons don’t exactly die,” Baltar said. “When one… expires, its consciousness is downloaded into a new body. So sacrificing an entire basestar full of them is more like wrecking a car than killing people. And the Cylons have wonderful auto insurance.”
“It also explains why they didn’t come back to Planet Goop,” Kara said. “At least, not at first. They needed to give the plague time to spread. And then when they did show up, it was with a tiny force. They weren’t playing to win—they were playing to see how well we could hold the game. Kat and Hot Dog broke down in the middle of the fight, which told them the plague was working, so they left. Now all they have to do is sit back and wait for us to die.”
“So why aren’t you sick?” Peter asked. “You’re one of the first people I ran into.” Then he added quickly, “I’ll tell you why you aren’t sick. It’s because the One hasn’t chosen you to see the truth yet.”
“A more scientific way to put it,” Baltar said, “is that the disease’s course runs differently in different people. It’s the nature of such brain disorders. One person succumbs quickly, another goes unscathed for weeks or, in some cases, months. It seems Lieutenant Thrace is one of the lucky ones.”
Cold water seemed to trickle over Kara’s skin. With all that had happened in the last few days, it had never occurred to her that she might be infected.
“Do you think I have it?” she forced herself to ask.
“Almost assuredly,” Baltar said wryly. “And it’s likely I do, too, and Dr. Cottle, and everyone else in the Fleet. Why do you think we haven’t bothered with quarantine protocols, Lieutenant?” His voice took on a shrill note. “Mr. Attis’ concert—and there’s no doubt in my mind that the Cylons chose him because they knew he’d give one—would have spread the disease to thousands of people. We’ve learned that Mr. Hyksos over there was on the third or fourth tier, and he caught it. Perhaps he even caught it from you, Lieutenant Thrace, during your excursion into—what’s it called? Crowd surfing?”
Kara’s mind fled back to the night she and Peter had shared, to the number of times they had kissed. Her insides shrank from sudden, cold fear. You couldn’t fight a disease. It got into your blood, hooked your cells with tiny, invisible claws, and tore you to bits from the inside out like a rabid dog in a henhouse.
“Dr. Cottle said I was free of bacteria and viruses,” Peter pointed out. “So it can’t be a disease. It’s a miracle, like I told you.”
“Actually it seems to be a prion,” Baltar said. “A protein fragment that in some ways acts like a virus but doesn’t look like one. That’s the theory, anyway.”
Cottle held up the scarlet vial. “Then let’s test it.”
Gaius Baltar pushed himself away from the microscope and almost backed into Number Six. He shot her an annoyed look, then ignored her. She ignored him, just as she had been doing from the moment of her appearance. Yet, she remained, perched on one of the work tables like a slighted cat. She looked at the ceiling, she looked at the equipment, she looked at Cottle. She never looked at him. Gaius shook his head. It made him nervous, but he really didn’t have time to ponder Six’s strange behavior. His work was vitally important to the safety of the Fleet. There were other considerations as well. A trickle of sweat skimmed along his hairline, and his mouth was dry. A few minutes ago, he had slipped a sample of his own blood under a microscanner and set it to search for the prion he had found in Hyksos’ blood. Now that he knew what he was looking for, the test was easy.
And it had come back positive.
Now every tiny tremor, every slip of the tongue made him break into a cold sweat. He was infected with a deadly scrap of protein, and he was going to die. He, Gaius Baltar. Struck down in his prime by a terrible disease. It wasn’t fair. After everything he had done to save humanity from the Cylons, he was now going to die in a Cylon plague. Fear knotted his stomach and made his hands shake. Or maybe it was the prions already He had been one of the first people to examine Peter Attis. Hell, he had helped persuade Adama not to space the man. Well, that had clearly been a mistake.
This was all Kara Thrace’s fault. If she had just kept her mouth shut, Adama wouldn’t have changed his mind and Peter Attis and his stupid prions would be floating in space, freeze dried for all eternity.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Cottle asked from his own microscanner. Gaius came to himself, realizing he had been staring at a computer screen without reading it.
“What are you seeing?” he asked.
“Peter’s blood,” Cottle said, “has three different prions.”
“All right, we’re listening,” Adama said.
Gaius stood at the front of the conference table with a pointer in his hand. An overhead projector cast a harsh square of light onto the screen. At the long conference table sat Commander Adama, Colonel Tigh, President Roslin, Captain Adama, and Dr. Cottle. With a small start, Gaius realized he had never learned the doctor’s first name. By now there was no way to ask it without being socially awkward. He cleared his throat.
“Dr. Cottle and I have run extensive tests,” Gaius said. “And this is what we’ve found.”
He slid the first transparency onto the overhead, which cast the picture of a prion onto the screen. It looked similar to the infectious one, except its ribbons were wrapped tightly around a body that was now slightly curved. Strange that it should look so innocent and pretty like a tangle of bright ribbons on the dresser of a young girl.
“This is a prion, which is short for ‘proteinaceous infectious particle’,” Gaius said in his Lecture Voice, the one he would have used if it hadn’t been for Peter Attis. Peter Attis—the source of this plague and of Gaius’ public humiliation. Anger rose up and threatened to burn away Gaius’ fear like a forest fire swallowing a firebreak. He let it happen—anger was always better than fear. “A prion, if you haven’t heard yet, is a long, complicated protein which isn’t quite a virus. We’ve named this one Prion H, for ‘harmless’. This prion is actually inert. Your body ignores it, and it ignores your body. This is the natural state for most prions, or PrPs. They’re everywhere in animal tissue, to tell you the truth, and it’s likely that this particular one was with us long before Peter Attis showed up on our doorstep.”
The people at the table sat in rapt attention. A bit of pride gave Gaius’ movements a bit of snap. They were enthralled, just as the audience at his ruined lecture would have been. Gaius was in charge of the room, and he liked that. He removed the first transparency and flipped a second onto the overhead’s glass platen. Another protein molecule came up on the screen, this one a bit smaller and less complicated.
“This is another prion,” Baltar explained. “We call it Prion T, for transformational. It’s the one that’s causing problems. It gets into your neural tissue and creates a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.”
“Could we have that in English, Doctor?” Tigh asked.
“Sorry,” he said. “The prions attach themselves to a patient’s brain cells and interfere with brain function. Eventually, the prions begin to actually destroy the tissue—encephalopathy. This opens up thousands of tiny holes, and after a while the brain takes on the form of a sponge—spongiform. And the condition is transmissible from one person to another. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.”
He paused to take a drink of water. No one moved or spoke. “There’s a theory called the Protein X hypothesis. It says that harmless prions like Prion H are transformed into their dangerous form by yet another prion. In other words, Prion H meets with Prion T and the two combine to form—” He twitched a third transparency onto the overhead. This one was the prion he and Cottle had seen in the lab before, its ribbons twisting about it in all directions, like strands of bright taffy on a bender. “—this prion. It’s still Prion H, but this one interacts with brain tissue. It’s deadly.”
“So the Cylons created this Prion T, and it changes Prion H, which we already have in us, into a deadly form,” Roslin said. “Is that it?”
Gaius nodded. “Yes. Prion T is designed to replicate itself in the human body, and your immune system ignores it. Prion T is hardy, and easy to transmit. A triumph of biological engineering, really, if you don’t mind that it kills you.”
“What are the symptoms, exactly?” Roslin asked.
“They vary in degree and intensity,” Gaius said. “Early on, the prions are only interfering with the brain and not destroying it. Symptoms include light palsy that eventually becomes full-fledged tonic-clonic seizures. Some people show strange slips of the tongue. Their brain-to-mouth filter malfunctions, and they start saying whatever occurs to them, rather like a bad stream-of-consciousness novel. Others sprinkle nonsense words into otherwise normal sentences. And still others will do both. These speech symptoms eventually worsen into an inability to say anything that makes sense—once the language centers start breaking down, the only thing the patient can produce is mindless babble. For some people, the progression is slow. For others, it’s quick. Eventually, the patient lapses into a coma and dies.” He cleared his throat. “We know this because the first patient we diagnosed—Mr. Hyksos—died a few minutes ago.”
The room fell silent. No one present had known Hyksos personally, but so few humans were left that even the death of a stranger was reason for a twinge of fear. Gaius more than anyone knew the difficulties and dangers of a small gene pool, and he didn’t like the way the odds were shrinking every day.
“So what’s the good news?” Lee Adama asked at last.
“I’m afraid there isn’t any right now,” Gaius told him. “Unless you count the fact that we have Peter Attis so we can study him.”
“Where is Attis now?” Adama asked.
“In sickbay,” Kara said. Her voice was quiet, completely unlike her usual brassy self.
Laura Roslin raised a finger in a tired gesture. Even in the semi-darkness of the room, Gaius could see that her face was pale. “Is there a cure or treatment for—what is the condition called, anyway?”
“I gave you the proper name,” Gaius said. Didn’t these people pay attention? “It’s a transmissible spongiform encephal—”
“Everyone else calls it the plague of tongues,” Cottle interrupted with a wave of his cigarette.
“Oh, frak me,” Kara muttered.
“Seizures and babbling,” Tigh observed sourly. “Shit.”
“It’s taken on a religious connotation?” Roslin asked.
“Sounds that way,” Commander Adama said. “This could cause a problem.”
“Aproblem?” Tigh said. “It’s a frakking disaster.”
“I never thought I’d say this,” Kara said, “but I agree with Colonel Tigh.”
A startled look crossed Tigh’s face, but he hid it quickly. “It’s because I’m right.”
Kara looked ready to snap at him, then seemed to change her mind. “Look, I’ve seen some of these people. They think that Peter’s a savior. Hell, he thinks he’s a savior.” And she gave a short description of the events at the restaurant. “When the marines broke in and hauled Peter away, his… his followers reacted as if the marines had shot him.” She gave Saul Tigh a hard look. “With all due respect, Colonel, it might have been better if you—if the marines—had been more subtle.”
“We had to get him fast, Lieutenant,” Tigh replied. “No time to pussyfoot around just because he’s a prettyboy who can wiggle around on a stage. He’s a danger to the Fleet.”
“Not his fault,” Kara said with cold calm. “He didn’t ask to be infected.”
“How do you know?” Gaius interjected. “The Cylons might have agreed to send him back to his own kind provided he carried this prion.”
“So he would be the only living human on the entire Fleet?” Kara scoffed. “Not likely.”
“He may not have known the prion was deadly,” Gaius pointed out. “He might have—”
Roslin held up a hand. “This is immaterial, and it doesn’t answer my initial question. Is there a cure?”
Everyone turned to look at Gaius, who hesitated a tiny moment. “No,” he said.
The word landed on the table like a lead paperweight. A long silence followed. No one seemed willing to speak, as if more words might make the situation worse. Gaius waited.
“So we’re all dead?” Lee Adama said at last.
“Not necessarily,” he said, relishing the relief, however small, that came over their faces. It swelled him, made him feel important the way they turned to him for answers. “No one’s ever cured a spongiform encephalopathy, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Peter has clearly been carrying both the T and the H prions for quite some time, but he shows no symptoms. He claims to have had the disease and recovered from it, despite the fact that no human being has ever successfully fought off a spongiform encephalopathy. Peter did say that all the other humans who had been captured with him had died somehow. Perhaps they were test cases. In any case, Dr. Cottle and I are operating on the assumption that the Cylons infected Peter, then somehow cured him and made him immune.”
“Don’t want to kill the carrier too fast,” Adama observed.
Gaius nodded. “Exactly. Peter’s blood contains a third prion. If it has a function, we haven’t figured it out yet, but it may be the key. Dr. Cottle and I have made this matter our top priority.”
“So,” Roslin said, “the fact remains that we have a deadly disease that masquerades as a religious plague along with the other touchy situation on our hands.”
“What touchy situation?” Commander Adama asked, clearly concerned.
Roslin gave a wan smile. “There’s an entire auditorium full of people who are expecting Peter to sing, but he’s obviously not going to.”
“Heaven forbid,” Gaius muttered.
“We should initiate quarantine protocols,” Tigh said. “Stop all ship-to-ship traffic and confine civilians to their quarters until we can spread the cure around.”
“Not much point in that,” Cottle said from his end of the table. “The prion’s widespread by now. Might just as well shut the coop after the chickens get out.”
“Are we all infected, Dr. Cottle?” Lee Adama asked.
Cottle shrugged. “Probably. You’ve all had close contact with Peter or with someone who did. Prion T was created to be easy to transmit. Breathing the same air will do it, really.”
Another long silence fell across the room. Gaius felt his own heart beating heavy, pumping the prion to every part of his body. It seemed like he could feel them sliding through his endothelial cells, permeating his brain. Utter nonsense, of course, but emotions didn’t listen to logic.
“So we’re all dead, then,” Tigh said into the silence. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Alarms blared. Everyone jumped, including Gaius. Every time that damned alarm went off, it took five years off his life. Sometimes he felt two hundred years old.
“This is Lieutenant Gaeta,” crackled the PA. “Set Condition One throughout the Fleet. Repeat, set Condition One. Commander Adama, please come to CIC.”
“From one thing or another,” Adama said, “we’re all dead.”
Kara Thrace’s pulse pounded in her body while her legs pounded down the corridor. She’d been cooped up in the Galactica for two days now, and she was still feeling a little pissed off at Peter for the dinner—or lack of one. She also wanted to throw him down on the floor and get a good, solid frakking out of him. And she wanted him to hold her for a long time and stroke her hair. And she wanted to crack him across the jaw for probably infecting her with some weirdo disease that was going to dissolve her brain into gelatinous goo, even if the cure—maybe—was right around the corner. Peter filled her with dichotomies thick as mud, and Kara didn’t like dichotomies. They reminded her too much of life at home with her parents, of her father in particular. She unconsciously flexed her fingers, the ones Dad had broken. Over years, he’d broken all of them.
“You’re a little frak-head. A worthless little slut, you got that? Gods, you can’t do anything right!”
“Daddy! Please. Please…”
“I’ll show you what it means to frak up. I’ll show you. Go get the hammer.”
“Daddy, please. I won’t do it again. Please.”
“I said, go get the frakking hammer, you little brat. Now!”
Kara stumbled slightly. Her feet wanted to drag. She tried to banish the memory, but it wouldn’t go. For a moment, she could only see her father’s face. Love and loathing both tried to take command of her heart, and neither would give in. She wanted him to say, just once, that he was proud of her, that she wasn’t a frak-up. She also wanted him to beg for mercy, to plead for her to stop the pain she was inflicting on him. It was unfair, and it was wrong that her dad was both father and foe to her, but that’s the way it was. Kara set her jaw and quickened her pace toward deck five. Dichotomies.
The solution was simple enough. Out there, in her Viper, she was free. Out there, everything was black and white. Everything she encountered was either a friend or an enemy. No one was both. The certainty and security of that fact brought a rush of exhilaration that not even fear of death could dampen.
A hand grabbed her arm from behind. She wrenched around and found herself looking into Lee Adama’s blue eyes. Other Galactica personnel rushed and bustled around them, intent on their own Condition One errands.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Lee demanded.
She stared, honestly confused. “To kill a bunch of Cylons. You know—bang, bang, kaboom?”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Lee said. “You’re grounded.”
“What?” Kara barely kept her voice below a shriek. “For what reason?”
“You were one of the first people to encounter Peter. And you’ve been… close to him.”
“You mean I frakked him.”
Lee flushed slightly then got angry “Yeah. You frakked him. That means that he probably injected you with his little prion.”
“It wasn’t that little,” Kara said with a deliberate smirk.
“Get your head on your job, Lieutenant,” he snapped, stung. Kara was a little surprised to find she felt a little bad about making the remark. “You’ve had this prion longer than most of the people on this ship, which means it isn’t safe to put you in a cockpit.”
“I haven’t shown any symptoms,” she said sharply denying a chilly tinge of fear. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”
“Yeah? Hold out your hands.”
She did. After a moment, the left one trembled just a bit. Kara stared at it. Her entire world shrank to that one tiny tremor. “No.”
“I noticed it in the conference room,” Lee said gently. He held up his own hand. It trembled ever so slightly. “We can’t fly, Kara. Not until Baltar or Cottle finds a cure. Simes is CAG until then.”
Without a word, Kara spun on her heel and stomped away. Lee, caught off guard, ran to catch up.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To CIC so I can see how the fight goes,” she said. “And then I’m going to sickbay.”
CIC was busy, hushed, and tense. The steady growl of the dradis undercut every quiet comment. Kara shot the readout a glance. A handful of Cylon raiders was sliding toward a flock of Vipers. Distorted radio chatter filled the silent spaces. Adama and Tigh stood at the light table in the center of CIC, their eyes also on the dradis.
“Why don’t we just Jump?” Lee asked.
“Colonial One’s Jump computer crashed,” his father replied shortly. “They have to reboot and recalculate. It’ll take almost half an hour.”
“Frak.” Lee pursed his lips. “Was it a Cylon virus?”
“Sharon,” Kara said without thinking. “She got over there somehow and did it.”
“For once, we can’t blame the Cylons,” Tigh said. “It seems to be an ordinary old computer crash.”
“Galactica Actual, this is Lieutenant Simes. We are about to engage the enemy.”
The voice was distorted by distance. Kara watched the display as the Vipers closed in on the Cylon raiders. She found herself leaning this way and that, trying to make the Vipers fly in the direction she wanted, like a Pyramid fan trying to get the ball to move a particular way.
“Only six raiders?” she said. “They’re just testing us again.”
“Which means you didn’t need to be out there,” Lee said.
She shot him an acid look. He was trying to be nice to her, she knew, but that only pissed her off. Lee was the CAG—or had been until now. He wasn’t supposed to be nice to his pilots. He was supposed to give an order and watch it carried out. Niceness, however, seemed to be hard-wired into him. It was too bad some of Tigh’s bitter acid couldn’t mix with Lee’s milky niceness. Between them they might make a fine commander.
The Vipers crawled across the screen until they were nose-to-nose with the raiders. Kara found she was holding her breath.
“Watch your flank, Mack,” Simes said.
“I see it.”
The soft thump of weapon fire came over the radio, and one of the raiders vanished from the readout.
“Nice one, Mack!”
“Thanks! It was my first piggy bank withdrawal from fighting with a bloody—”
“Shit,” Tigh breathed.
“Mack! Return to Galactica immediately!”
“Immediately now once upon a time is flying.” On the display, one of the Vipers weaved erratically. A raider dove at it. Kara leaned forward and put out a hand, as if she were one of the Lords of Kobol, able to cup the Viper in her hands and protect it from a distance. Her jaw was tight, and she felt helpless, completely impotent. All she could do was watch. Was this how Adama felt all the time? Her hand was shaking again. The Cylon on the screen dove.
“Mack!”
“Is a great big flying fishbowl full of milk for the cats…”
The Viper vanished from the display.
“Frak!”
Kara looked at Lee for a long moment, then turned and fled CIC. She didn’t let herself run, quite, but she didn’t let anything get in her way, either. People moved out of her way instinctively, like schools of fish scattering before a shark. She refused to let herself think; she just reacted. In a few minutes, she was at Peter’s bedside down in sickbay. Restraints still held him down. Kara had mixed feelings about this, too, and she refused to examine them. She was sick of being mixed around like a frakking martini.
A red tube ran from Peter’s left arm to a machine. The tube emerged from other side of the machine and ran down to Peter’s right arm. Red liquid flowed sluggishly through both tubes. Dr. Cottle stood at the machine, adjusting dials and checking readouts. He and Peter looked at Kara when she came in.
“What are you doing to him?” she asked without preamble.
“Hi,” Peter said from the bed. “Nice to see you, too.”
“We’re taking some blood and plasma,” Cottle said. “We won’t take too much, and we’ll return a chunk of the red blood cells to his body.”
“How soon before you find a cure?” she asked.
Cottle blinked at her. “Not right this instant. We’re barely—”
“Sure is nice to be treated like a human being instead of a science experiment,” Peter put in. “I never realized how much I missed being on the Cylon ship until now. Maybe this is another test of my faith. ‘And the Unifier shall walk among the Enemy, and He shall return both changed and unharmed.’”
“Shut up,” Kara snapped.
“Kara!” Lee stood framed by the curtains that separated the sections of sickbay. “Are you all right? You took off like—”
“I’ll be fine, Lee,” she snarled. “Just as soon as the good doctor finds a frakking cure, I’ll be even better.”
“I told you it’ll take a while,” Cottle said. He took a drag from his cigarette and tweaked one of the dials. Blood filled four vials. He capped them and picked them up like a bouquet of scarlet glass flowers. “And that’s assuming there’s even a cure to find.”
“That makes me feel so much better.” Kara said.
“Will you people quit talking about me as if I wasn’t here?” Peter demanded, trying unsuccessfully to sit up. “I’m the frakking Unifier, after all.”
“Shut up,” Lee said, and Peter sank back into his bed, a defiant look on his face. “Kara,” Lee continued, “I wanted to tell you—the Cylons jumped away again. Looks like it was another test. All the pilots are returning.”
“Except Mack,” Kara pointed out. “If I’d been out there, he wouldn’t have died.”
“You would both have died,” Lee said. “Your hand is getting worse. I can see it from here.”
Kara put both hands behind her back like a small child in a glassware store. She could feel one of them shaking, defying all commands for it to stop. How much longer before she lay writhing on the floor babbling junk and nonsense? Anger flared. Peter had done this to her. She knew he hadn’t done it on purpose, that he would have stopped it if he could, but that didn’t make her feel any less angry. She wished she had just blown the rescue pod to dust. The old saying was true—no good deed went unpunished.
“I’ll be able to get out there once I get the cure,” Kara said, gesturing at Peter. “If the Doc here would just get off his ass and do some work.”
“Stop ignoring me!” Peter howled. “I’m not a thing!”
The sickbay curtains burst aside and the alcove was suddenly full of people. Kara found herself staring down the barrel of a pistol. Lee was doing the same. Cottle’s cigarette fell from his lips, and he took a step back from his machine, a startled and frightened look on his face. Kara noted in a flash that the assailants—there were seven of them—all carried service revolvers. Two carried pulse rifles. And all of them wore red masks that covered their faces and hair but left their eyes exposed.
“What the frak?” Lee said.
Cottle moved with astonishing speed. He thrust the blood vials into Lee’s startled hands and interposed himself between the intruders and Peter, his patient. “What the hell are you doing? Get out of my sickbay!”
“Freeze, Dr. Asshole!” one of the intruders barked. It was a woman’s voice, muffled by her mask.
“Look, I don’t care who you are,” Cottle said, “but you can’t—”
The woman swept him aside with easy strength. Cottle fell heavily against a medicine cabinet. It tipped over backward with Cottle on top of it and crashed to the floor.
“Hurry, now!” the woman said. “Let’s do it!”
“What’s going on?” Peter asked, pulling at his restraints again. “Frak! Let me go!”
Two of the masked figures holstered their pistols and snatched long knives from their belts. They moved toward the bed, blades glinting in the fluorescent light. Kara’s heart jerked and a new fear trilled through her. Her hand continued to shake even as she held it up. The pistol that kept her in place hadn’t moved. Peter stared at the blades like a bird hypnotized by a snake.
“You don’t need to do this,” Kara said evenly. Adrenaline zinged through her like the blade of a hot knife. “Leave him alone.”
“I’m afraid we can’t, Lieutenant.” The leader woman snapped her fingers. The blades flipped down. Peter gasped as they slashed his restraints open. Then he sat up, rubbing his wrists. The two masks helped him off the bed, and Peter pulled the tubes from his arms. A grimace crossed his handsome face, and a thin line of blood trickled down the inside of both elbows.
“Let’s go,” the leader said.
“You can’t take him,” Cottle said. “We need him to—”
“Shut up!” said the mask holding the pistol on Kara. “We’re the Unity and he’s the Unifier. He doesn’t belong in a prison. He belongs with his people.”
“Listen to me,” Lee said in a reasonable voice, his hands in the air, still holding the vials Cottle had given him. “Peter’s important to the entire Fleet, not just to you.”
The eyes above the mask holding the pistol on Kara flicked toward Lee. Kara took advantage and moved. She swept the pistol out of her assailant’s grip and punched him under the chin with the heel of her hand. She felt his teeth crash together, and he staggered backward. Lee dropped the vials—glass shattered on the floor—and grabbed his own attacker by the wrist. In a quick, practiced move, he disarmed his opponent and twisted the man around in front of him, turning him into a human shield. The pair with pulse rifles were fumbling them into firing position, and Kara mentally marked them civilian. They were probably more dangerous to themselves than to the people they aimed the rifles at. The remaining two stood next to Peter, apparently unwilling to leave his side. Their pistols were still holstered. Cottle had fled, and he would doubtless raise the alarm, evening the odds considerably.
Kara was reaching down to snatch up her opponent’s dropped pistol when Lee stiffened and released his prisoner. The prisoner stumbled away and Lee, looking vaguely surprised, dropped unconscious to the floor. The leader was standing behind him. How the hell had she done that? No time to think about it. Kara’s hand closed on the pistol—
—and a heavy foot came down hard on it. Kara stared stupidly down at it even as crushing pain made her cry out. She looked up. The leader’s masked face met her gaze with hard brown eyes.
“Don’t even,” the leader said.
Kara, who was still kneeling, yanked her hand back, feeling the scrape of skin on metal and hard rubber. She tried to punch upward, but the leader caught her hand in a cruel grip.
“Not worth it,” the leader said.
“Don’t hurt her,” Peter gasped.
“We need to go,” said another mask. “Now!”
Kara whipped her free hand up and managed to snag the leader’s mask just under the eyes. The fabric was soft and stretchy. She yanked downward even as the leader caught Kara’s other wrist with terrible strength. The mask snapped back into place. Kara caught only a glimpse of the leader’s face, but it was enough.
“Satisfied?” asked Sharon Valerii.