CHAPTER

14

 

 

The acrid smell of burning ceramic scorched Helo’s nostrils. It felt strange to be kneeling on the outer hull of a spaceship without a vac suit for protection, but he kept his mind on his job. The marine ship had clamped itself to the Monarch like a barnacle and Captain Adama himself had opened the floor hatch, revealing the gray ceramic. Helo kept his hands steady and his eyes on the white-hot flicker of flame that was burning a careful circle through the hull of the mining ship. Goggles protected his eyes. The strike force gathered behind him, bodies tense and weapons ready. Helo could hear their body armor creak as they shifted position.

The final bit of ceramic gave way. Helo jumped back as a human-sized circle dropped into the ship and landed with a loud clang. He extinguished the torch. Captain Lee Adama dropped the end of a cord into the space beyond. The other end was hooked to a small monitor clipped to Lee’s belt. It showed a dim, empty corridor.

“No apparent resistance,” Lee reported. “Move in!” Moving with trained precision, the strike force members dropped into the hole. The first ones scurried out of the way, weapons drawn to cover the ones who came next. Helo and Lee Adama were the last.

“They have to know we’re coming,” Helo said in a low voice. “Why aren’t they meeting us?”

“Maybe they don’t want a fight,” Lee murmured. “Maybe this’ll turn into a game of hide-and-seek.” He holstered his rifle across his back and unrolled a long square of paper, specs for the Monarch. “Gaeta said that since we stopped enforcing the quarantine, something like ten ships have docked with the Monarch. The only place where all those people could be gathering is the main processing area here. But that’s just a guess. I wish we knew for sure.”

“Sir,” Racetrack said. “I’m getting a signal.”

Lee spun like a small tornado. Helo wondered if the captain was thinking about Kara like he was thinking about Sharon. “From who?”

“No one in particular.” Racetrack held up her radio so Lee could see the readout. “It’s a missile ordnance tracking signal.”

“Kara,” Lee breathed. “She’s found a way to tell us where she is and make it look like an ordnance signal.”

“I don’t know, sir,” Helo said doubtfully. “What if the Unifiers really have ordnance?”

“Doesn’t seem likely they’d activate the homing device,” Racetrack said. “It gives away their position.”

A series of clanks and thuds rang through the corridor. Everyone, including Helo, readied their weapons, rifle barrels pointing in a dozen different directions like an angry porcupine. After a moment the noises faded.

“Mining ship,” Racetrack said as another set of sounds started up, further away this time. “Lots of weird noises around. Let me get to work and we can get moving.”

Helo let himself relax. A little, anyway. Lighting in the corridor was dim, and the whole place smelled of algae and engine oil. Helo shifted inside his flak armor. A belt hung with ammunition and equipment dragged at his waist, a helmet covered his head, and he carried a pulse rifle. The back of his head wouldn’t stop itching. The helmet wouldn’t let him scratch, which made it worse. Doc Cottle had been too busy with plague patients to look at him, and now Helo was on a strike force, where an itchy head was considered something you sucked up.

Technically Helo shouldn’t be here. He was combat-trained, yes, but he wasn’t trained to sneak aboard an enemy ship and track down terrorists. But Captain Adama, faced with hundreds of people whose hands shook too much to fire a weapon, had been forced to augment marines with other personnel. At the moment, that included Helo. So far his hands had proven plague-free and rock-steady, though he found himself checking every few minutes.

The search for Sharon had been suspended. No one was available to look for her. Helo couldn’t decide if this was a positive or a negative. In the end, he had decided to stop thinking about it altogether. If she turned up, she would turn up.

But he also wondered about the baby.

He was going to be a father. The idea ambushed him at odd moments, like a mugger whacking him over the head and dragging him into an alley. A baby. A little girl or boy who would look at him and say, “Daddy!” First steps, first words. First date.

From a prison cell. How would Adama handle this? It wouldn’t be fair to the baby to keep it in a cell, and it wouldn’t be right to keep it away from Sharon. Adama would have to make some sort of ruling, and that pissed Helo off. Every other time a baby was born, people celebrated. New life was precious and valued and loved. Except his. His baby would be born in a prison to a lifetime prisoner. His baby would be born to a hated enemy. His baby would endure a life of stigma. His baby’s birth would be decided by military law, his parenting held up to military scrutiny. The baby had committed no crime, but already it was being treated like a criminal. Helo got angrier and angrier just thinking about it.

Racetrack jostled Helo’s arm, bringing him out of his seething reverie. He almost jumped, realizing how foolish it had been for him to lose himself inside his own head when he was in enemy territory.

“Careful,” Racetrack said. She had opened a wall panel and was tearing at the nest of cable inside. “Pass me that shunt, would you?”

Helo obeyed. Racetrack selected a cable and attached the shunt while the rest of the platoon stood guard. Racetrack, an adept ECO, flipped on a portable screen. Helo peered over her shoulder. At first the screen remained blank, but she flicked dials and switches and eventually came up with an image of a large room crammed with people. Several of them wore red masks.

“I’ve broken into the security cameras, Captain,” she reported. “I think we’re looking at the main processing area.”

“Crowded,” observed a marine Helo didn’t know.

Captain Lee Adama checked the schematics. “It’s also on the only path from here to where the signal is coming from.”

“So we have to go through them to get to Kara?” Helo said.

“Looks that way.”

“Sir,” said one of the marines, “our orders are not to shoot or attack civilians. How are we going to get through those people without attacking?”

Lee Adama looked at the people on the screen, then at the schematic in his hand, then at the hole in the bulkhead above him. “We’re not,” he said.

 

“Commander,” said Felix Gaeta. “Lieutenant Edmonson is beaming a direct signal to us. We have video of what’s happening on the Monarch.”

“Put it up, Lieutenant,” Colonel Tigh ordered.

Bill Adama turned his eyes up to one of the monitors above his head. Lee was out there, leading the Monarch strike in an attempt to rescue Kara Thrace, and Adama had to stand there in CIC and pretend he wasn’t worried, that his heart wasn’t leaping in his chest, that he wasn’t sweating under his uniform. No reason for distress, everyone. The Old Man has everything under control.

He adjusted his glasses and peered at the monitor. It remained blank.

“There a problem, Mr. Gaeta?” Tigh asked.

“Just… taking a little longer to get the telemetry right, sir.” Gaeta, flushing, worked at his controls, his hands hidden by the rim of the console. Adama knew what was causing the delay, and he kept his face carefully neutral. He shot Tigh a quick glance to let him know that the colonel should keep his mouth shut. Tigh gave a tiny nod in acknowledgment. Dualla busied herself at her own console, as did everyone else in CIC. Their work was similarly slow and laborious and several stations were unstaffed, but no one took note. Yep, no reason for distress. Everything’s under control. Ignore the elephant standing beside you. We all know it’s there, we all know why Gaeta can’t work his console, and we’re all going to pretend we don’t. The marines will bring back Peter Attis alive, healthy, and chock full of curative protoplasm to cure the disease we aren’t talking about. We won’t mention that the Cylons could pop up at any time and turn the Fleet into an expanding cloud of gas and debris. We won’t mention that the prions are turning our brains to sponges and that our only hopes are the leader of a religious movement that kidnapped one of our best pilots, and a scientist who isn’t known for his stability.

A wave of anger suddenly swept over Adama. He was dying, dammit, dying for the second time in as many months. The frakking asshole whose life Adama had spared had repaid Adama by infecting him with a deadly disease, creating a religious cult that fomented chaos wherever it went, kidnapping a pilot who was like a daughter to him, and disappearing into the bowels of a mining ship with the disease’s only cure. Gods, Adama had even attended the man’s concert. And what an evening that had been. Laura Roslin had clung lightly to his arm like a half-solid ghost, and the two of them sank into lawn chairs set up specifically for them, like a king and queen attending the revels of the commoners. Billy Keikeya hovered nearby like a cupbearer. And gods help him, Adama actually enjoyed the show. The music wasn’t his usual thing—as he grew older, the classics became more and more appealing—but Adama recognized good showmanship when he saw it, and Peter Attis had a hell of a voice. Laura Roslin sat next to him, unabashedly enthralled, and Adama found himself feeling pleased and proud, as if he had somehow arranged Peter’s rescue and subsequent concert for her benefit. Anything that reduced her pain was, in his book, a fine thing, and no more than Roslin deserved. As for himself, he’d forgotten for a while about juggling cats, about the death of his wife, about Cylon attacks. He’d even caught himself pretending that he was out on a date with a beautiful woman. Adama blushed slightly at that memory. Laura Roslin was the president of the Fleet and a good friend, nothing else. But his treacherous mind, the one that had been hungry for female company for too many years now, planted the idea nonetheless.

But the concert, it turned out, had become a major venue for spreading this plague of tongues and the point of a terrorist attack by Caprica Sharon. Billy had hustled the president away the moment that news came down, and Adama had snapped from civilian mode into commander mode. It was as if an old, heavy weight had smacked down on him with contemptuous familiarity. He had dealt with the crisis, and only later had he realized he hadn’t even bid Laura Roslin good night.

And Caprica Sharon was still at large, Adama couldn’t spare the personnel to look for her, and gods only knew what she was up to. Still more cats to juggle.

He banished further thought with firm discipline. Right now, he had to deal with the Monarch and Peter Attis. The Sharon problem would have to wait.

The picture on the monitor was silent and fuzzy despite—or perhaps because of—Gaeta’s ministrations. A group of helmeted marines, their face plates down and their weapons holstered, burst into a roomful of people. Adama had no way of telling which one was Lee. His muscles tightened. Beside him, he sensed Saul Tigh tensing up as well. Adama understood why. Tigh had been in charge of the Fleet during the Gideon incident—the civilians called it a massacre—and Adama knew the man lived under a cloud of guilt over it. Tigh covered it well and acted as if the entire incident had never taken place. Adama wondered sometimes if it wouldn’t have been better for him to show guilt or other public feeling about the Gideon. There were times when the commanding officer needed to be a god and times when the commanding officer needed to be human. The Gideon might have been one of the latter times. Well, it was too late now. Tigh making any kind of public statement about the Gideon would only tear open wounds that hadn’t fully healed yet.

On the screen, the people in the processing room swarmed toward the marines like ants on a pile of sugar. Several of them wore masks over the lower half of their faces, creating two groups of masked, anonymous people thronging toward each other. Army ants and worker ants, heading for the clash. Adama held his breath. If the people attacked, the marines had the right to defend themselves, but that could quickly devolve into something worse. Another Gideon loomed.

But the people just surrounded the marines and stood there, unmoving. The two groups froze, staring at each other. Then one of the marines, the one in the lead, tentatively tried to nudge the woman in front of him aside. She didn’t fight back, but she didn’t give ground, either.

“Can we get sound on this?” Adama asked. His hands were shaking again, a situation that made his mouth go dry with a fear—

the prion is chewing on your brain

—that he refused to examine closely.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Gaeta said. “The security cameras on the Monarch aren’t wired for sound, and the marines are still keeping radio silence in case Lieutenant Thrace’s kidnappers are listening in.”

Adama nodded acknowledgment and went back to watching. The marine—Lee?—tried pushing forward again, but the woman still didn’t move. Neither did the people standing on either side of her. Another moment passed, and then the lead marine—Adama was more and more sure it was Lee—signaled, and the entire platoon tried to push forward.

The people didn’t resist, but neither did they get out of the way. They fell against the marines or went limp or formed human barricades. The marines were easily outnumbered ten to one, and their progress through the crowd slowed to a maddening crawl. Adama recognized the technique, of course. Passive resistance. There was no riot, no attack, nothing the marines could really fight against, but it hindered progress nonetheless. Against an opponent willing to kill, it was almost worthless. The Fleet marines, however, didn’t want to kill anyone, and the civilians knew it. It made an effective wall between the marines and Peter Attis, wherever he was.

“Why don’t they fire off some tear gas?” Tigh said. “That’d clear the area right fast.”

“It would get into the ventilation system,” Adama pointed out. “In a ship that small, the gas would fog the entire place in just a few minutes, and there’d be nowhere to run to. Then you’d have a shipful of angry civilians in pain. Bad combination.”

“Right, right,” Tigh said, clearly disappointed.

On the screen, the marines tried to wade through the mass of people, but were unable to make progress. Every person they pushed aside was immediately replaced by another, and then another. Every so often, one of the resisters fell twitching and convulsing to the floor. When that happened, two of the masked Unity followers hauled the victim into the path the marines were trying to take. The symbolism was clear—the people touched by the One opposed the people who fought for the Lords of Kobol.

“Frak,” Tigh muttered. “They’re going to have to open fire if they want to get through.”

“They have orders not to,” Adama said. “And I’m not going to change them.”

“Then we’re all dead, Commander,” Tigh said. “If they don’t get Attis back to sickbay, the prions and Cylons win.”

“I won’t have an—a massacre on my watch, Colonel,” Adama said, dropping the word “another” just in time. But another voice inside his head said he might need to issue killing orders. A hundred civilians might die, but it would mean the rest would live. He frowned hard. Why did so damn many of his choices come down to letting a few die so many could live? Why couldn’t it ever be that everyone gets to live?

The marines continued to wade through civilians, making no real progress but also inflicting no casualties. Adama’s left hand was seriously shaking now, and he wondered how long it would be before he joined the masses writhing down in sickbay and on deck five.

“Commander, Dr. Baltar is on the line for you,” Dualla said.

Hope and relief washed through Adama. If Baltar was calling, it could only mean he’d finished a cure for the plague. He could order the marines to return to the Galactica, and Peter Attis could sing and preach blasphemy to his heart’s content. End of problem. He felt the weight of stress lift. Even Saul Tigh looked relieved. For once, the solution would be easy. He picked up the receiver with his right hand, the one that wasn’t shaking.

“Hello, Doctor,” Adama said. “What can I do for you?”

“Commander, I’m afraid I have bad news,” Baltar said.

Adama’s stomach tightened again, and the weight crashed back down on him as if it had never left. “What is it, then?” he asked with resignation.

“Prion C, the cure prion, is far more complicated than I anticipated,” Baltar said regretfully. “I can eventually synthesize it, but… I doubt I can do it before the majority of patients become terminal.”

Adama’s insides turned to liquid and he almost dropped the phone. “What are you saying, Doctor?”

“I’m estimating that by now, over ninety percent of the Fleet’s population has been infected with the plague prion and that by the time I’ve finished creating the curative prion, close to eighty percent of the Fleet’s population will have died.”

Baltar delivered this news in a calm, flat voice. A thousand different thoughts swirled through Adama’s head, making him dizzy. Or was the prion affecting him? He wondered how much time Baltar had wasted calculating how many people would die and how fast, and he wondered if more people would die because Baltar was talking on the phone instead of working in his lab.

“How long before you have the cure, Doctor?” Adama asked, his voice betraying none of these questions.

“Two or three days,” Baltar replied.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Adama said evenly. “Don’t let me keep you from your work.” Then he hung up.

“How long?” Tigh asked.

Adama didn’t see any point in concealing the truth. “Two days, maybe three.”

“But we’ll all be dead by then,” blurted Felix Gaeta, violating the unwritten rule about mentioning the elephant in the room with a commander who juggled cats.

“Then we’d better hope Captain Adama and those marines bring us Peter Attis,” Adama said. With that, he hid his shaking left hand under the light table and turned his attention back to the marines on the monitors.

 

Nonsense fell in long strings from Kara’s mouth now. The only way she could stop it was to bite her lips shut like a child refusing to take medicine, but her treacherous muscles didn’t always obey her. Most of her body trembled with earthquake aftershocks, and the moment she stopped concentrating, more bullshit tumbled from her mouth. It wasn’t even real words. She could say real words if she worked at it, but she was so tired. All she wanted to do was pass out. Except her twitching, jerking body kept her awake on the cold floor.

Peter sat cross-legged with her head in his lap. He stroked her hair and said things that he probably thought soothing. “Everything’s going to be fine. I know it’s bad now, but eventually you’ll see the One and you’ll recover, like I did. You’ll be fine. Just fine.”

Kara had never wanted to hit anyone more in her entire life.

Sharon, meanwhile, was kneeling over the red duffel bag, dipping tools in and out of the ordnance that squatted inside like a malevolent toad. The red mask still covered most of her face. Except it wasn’t Sharon’s face. It wasn’t the Sharon Kara knew. She was someone else, another copy of Caprica Sharon. Kara should have realized it. Caprica Sharon wouldn’t endanger her baby by escaping and trying to commit acts of terrorism. This Sharon, a different one, had somehow gotten on board, probably hidden somewhere in Peter’s escape pod. There had been one Sharon on it—why not a second? The pod had been searched, but a secret compartment would be easy enough to add, especially since the Cylons had been in possession of the stupid thing for months. And if this Sharon was caught and executed, so what? She’d get a brand-new body and probably spend her remaining days lazing around a Cylon swimming pool bragging about how she put one over on those idiot humans.

The bitch had certainly outfoxed Kara by convincing her to keep silent about Sharon’s identity as a Cylon. Black, tarry anger bubbled like pitch, and one of Kara’s hands actually managed a fist for a couple seconds before losing it again. Sharon, glancing up from the ordnance, noticed and flashed Kara a quick thumbs-up before turning back to her work.

A monitor set up on one of the shelves showed a troop of marines trying to force their way through Peter’s followers. They made almost no headway. The Unity members created a solid wall of bodies five and six people thick. They flung themselves down on the floor. They draped themselves over the invaders like boneless lovers. And the marines clearly had orders not to kill. Or if they did, they hadn’t acted on them yet.

“Still silence on the radio,” Zarek said. He was fiddling with a frequency scanner, his face serious. “They either know or suspect that we can listen in on what—”

“—change your orders, Captain,” said the scanner. Kara’s heart jumped. It was Commander Adama’s voice. “Dr. Gains says he can’t replicate the cure prion in time for it to do us any good. Peter’s blood is the only cure, and we need him back on Galactica no matter what the cost.”

Kara gasped. So did Peter and Tom Zarek. Peter’s blood would cure the plague? Kara’s limbs shook with a terrible, all-encompassing palsy, and the cure was standing only a few feet away. Kara wondered what would happen if news of this hit the entire Fleet. She imagined hordes of people stampeding toward Peter, all of them hungry for his blood.

“I have new orders for you,” Adama continued on the scanner. There was a pause, and Kara held her breath, knowing what was coming next, praying she wouldn’t hear it. “You are authorized to use force against the civilians. Deadly force, if necessary.”

“Sir? I didn’t quite copy that.” It was Lee’s voice, and the sound swelled Kara with a bright elation she didn’t think was possible. Lee was leading the force that was coming to help her. Help was coming. Lee was coming. For a moment, she felt Lee’s arms lifting her, holding her and keeping her safe. The hardbitten part of her, the part that let her survive broken fingers and bruised skin, told her that no one could ever keep her safe, but the part of her that was tired ordered it to shut up. Lee was coming, and she could relax.

If he could get through the civilians.

“I said, use deadly force if you need to,” Adama said. “Peter Attis is your top priority. Nothing else matters, Captain.”

There was a pause. Then Lee said, “Understood, sir.”

“You frakking bastard!” Zarek shouted at the scanner. “Didn’t you learn anything from the Gideon?”

Kara licked dry lips. Lee wouldn’t shoot unarmed civilians. Would he? But she knew the answer. He would have to. Peter carried the cure for the disease. If sacrificing a hundred people meant several thousand would live, what choice did Lee have? Kara thought about the image of the little kid crying over her daddy’s chewed and bloody corpse on the Gideon and wondered how many more kids would be crying over their parents in just a few minutes.

“Sounds like our time here is limited,” Sharon said, still working on the duffel bag.

Peter stared at the scanner. “What did he mean when he said my blood would cure the plague?”

“I didn’t think that remark needed interpretation,” Sharon said. “But I’m betting that once word of it gets out, there’ll be a whole lot of people wanting to go vampire on your ass.”

“People like me,” Zarek said coldly. “Frak—this explains… Look, are you telling me this is a real disease? I thought it was religious fervor. Your groupies were the ones who came down with it.”

“It’s… it’s real,” Kara managed to gasp out. “Real service gets good tips for—”

“The plague doesn’t need a cure,” Peter said. “I was out cold for a while, but I recovered. Everyone else will recover.”

But Tom Zarek was already rummaging through a first aid kit. He came up with a syringe. “Let me have some of your blood, Attis.”

“You’re not a doctor,” Peter protested.

Zarek held up shaky hands for a moment, then grabbed Peter by the front of his shirt and shoved him against a wall. He was older than Peter, but his arms were heavy with muscle. “No. I’m just a man who spent twenty years in a prison that taught me a dozen ways to cause someone serious physical pain. You let me draw some blood right now, or I’m going to pound you into a frakking pancake.”

Peter shot Sharon a glance, but she just returned his gaze, an amused look in her eyes. He finally nodded. Zarek pushed up one of Peter’s sleeves and jabbed the needle into the man’s elbow. Peter yelped.

“Watch it!”

“Shut up, god-boy.” Zarek filled the syringe despite his shaky hands, then jabbed the needle into his own arm and depressed the plunger. Kara stared hungrily at the syringe, but Peter and Zarek seemed to have forgotten she existed. She wanted that syringe more than anything she had ever wanted. Life in a few cc’s of human blood.

“ATTENTION CIVILIANS!” boomed a voice from the scanner. Kara didn’t recognize the speaker. “IF YOU DO NOT VACATE THIS AREA IMMEDIATELY, WE WILL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE!”

Zarek tossed the syringe to Peter, who caught it automatically. “You can frak your revolution,” he said. “Your religion isn’t real, your followers are deluded, and you’re as empty as your music. Those people out there are going to die for a cause that doesn’t even exist.”

Peter looked frantically around the room, as if his world were coming apart. Kara supposed it was. “They’re going to kill my people. I should be with them.”

Faint shouts came over the scanner. Clearly someone had left their radio open. “Up with the Unity!” someone shouted. Someone else started singing Peter’s revolution song.

“Not that piece of shit again,” Zarek muttered as Peter headed for the main door. “Gods, I can’t believe I thought this was a group worth helping.”

“Stay here, Peter,” Sharon ordered without looking up from the duffle bag. Her voice was cold and brittle as a knife made of ice. “Don’t frakking move.”

He stopped and looked at her. “Exactly what are you doing with that?”

“I’m putting a timer on the ordnance so we can set it off properly.”

“But we don’t want to set it off,” Peter said, growing more and more agitated. “We don’t want anyone to die!”

“The marines don’t know that,” Sharon said calmly. “It’s a much better bluff if they can see the countdown. And don’t try to pull the timer out once I’m done. If you do, you’ll have ten seconds to live before the ship-shattering kaboom.”

“THIS IS YOUR SECOND WARNING. MOVE ASIDE AND BRING US PETER ATTIS, OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE.”

“Why not remove the explosive part, attach a timer to the rest, and bluff with that?” Peter said.

Sharon paused.

Ha! Kara thought, feeling a moment of triumph seep through the fear and exhaustion. He’s frakking got you!

“There is that,” Sharon said slowly. “But I don’t think we’ll do it that way. We need to move out.”

“Move out?” Peter echoed. Kara wanted to roll her eyes.

Peter seemed to spend most of his time repeating what other people said. “We’re staying here to confront the marines if they get past my people.”

On the monitor, one of the marines looked up at the camera. He raised a pistol and fired at it. People ducked and screamed. The monitor image dissolved into static.

“My people,” Sharon said, a smile in her eyes. “I like the way you say that, Peter. As if you own them.”

“I don’t own anyone.” He took a step toward her. “Who are you, anyway?”

“Someone who’s telling you we have to get the frak out of here,” Sharon said. “Grab your girl-toy and we’ll go. Tommy’s already left. Didn’t you notice?”

Kara, still shaking on the cold floor, managed a glance around the storeroom. It was empty except for the monitors in the corner. They still showed that the marines weren’t making much headway against the room packed full of people. Tom Zarek was gone. Kara wasn’t in the least surprised. She raised her hands, trying to wave them and get Peter’s attention, but she didn’t have the coordination. He still held the syringe, and it was half full of blood.

“THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING,” the scanner said. “MOVE ASIDE AND BRING US PETER ATTIS OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO OPEN FIRE!”

“The marines are wrong,” Sharon said. “The schematics they’re undoubtedly using to get around are telling them that the only way into this part of the ship is through that room your people are guarding. Problem is, when the Monarch was modified to take on algae, the workers added another access passageway to make air circulation easier and to simplify transporting goop around, and those changes aren’t on the schematics yet. That means we can get out of here just like Tommy did and put the bomb someplace where it’ll do some good. It’s not close enough to the outer bulkheads here to cause a breach.”

“We aren’t setting off the bomb!” Peter shouted at her.

Kara mustered all her willpower, forcing her lips to move the way she wanted them to. “Peter!” she gasped.

He turned and looked at her. Instant realization came over him. “Frak! I’m sorry, Kara. I’m so sorry.” He dashed over to kneel beside her and push up one of her sleeves. Kara felt the sharp prick as the syringe pierced her skin.

But Sharon was already there. She grabbed Peter’s wrist and twisted. He yelped and dropped the syringe, though it remained stuck in Kara’s arm. The plunger hadn’t moved.

“None of that,” Sharon said. “We’re getting out of here. Now.”

“Who the hell are you, anyway?” he gasped.

“The less you know—”

Peter lunged. He caught the bottom of Sharon’s mask and yanked. Caught by surprise, Sharon didn’t react in time, and her face lay revealed. The mask made a crumpled red beard beneath her chin, though her hair was still covered. Kara continued to shake on the floor, the syringe sticking out of her arm, but she saw Peter’s face go pale as milk. His face looked so horrified and stricken that Kara would have felt sorry for him if she weren’t twisting in the final stages of a disease he had given her. She looked down at the syringe poking into her arm.

“Mistress Eight,” Peter whispered, rising to his feet.

“One of them,” Sharon said, also rising.

Cracks of gunfire came over the scanner. People screamed. Kara’s blood went cold at the sounds, but more of her attention was focused on the syringe. The needle had pierced her deeply—Peter wasn’t a medical technician and had just jabbed it in. A thin bit of blood trickled down the side of her arm. Hers or Peters? Kara gathered her strength. She probably had one chance to make this work. If she frakked it up, she was dead.

“Oh gods.” Peter backed up a shaky step, his attention on Sharon. “Oh gods, what have I done?”

“So much for faith,” Sharon said. “Or maybe you’re swearing to your multiple gods out of habit.” She caught up the duffel bag with easy strength and set the timer inside. Kara, still on the floor, couldn’t read the numbers, but she heard the familiar beeping of a countdown. “I suppose this is where I bow out. There’s a lot more I can do, but not if I’m dead or captured.”

Kara made her move. She half rolled, half flopped onto her stomach. The motion drove the syringe deeper into the meat of her arm. It was like being stabbed with a thin knife. Kara bit her lip at the unexpected pain and flopped onto her back again. The syringe fell out of her arm and clattered to the floor. The plunger had been pushed all the way in.

“Resourceful as ever, Starbuck,” Sharon said, noticing for the first time what Kara was up to. “Now I really have to go.”

“Where’s… groll delk karoledd—frak!” Kara tried again. “Where’s… real Sharon?”

“I’m perfectly real,” Sharon said. “More real than the One. More real than Peter’s faith.”

“There is no One, is there?” Peter said slowly. He was wrapped in his own fear and misery. The self-centered bastard wasn’t even trying to fight Sharon. Not that he had a hope of hurting her, but Kara thought he should at least try. “You all just fed that religious stuff to me, made me believe it. But it’s all shit.”

Sharon cocked her head. “You think so? God exists, Peter dear. How you see God is up to you, really. But we don’t care what you humans believe. The prions will kill most of you and leave the rest so weakened that you’ll be easy prey. Thanks be to God. And to Peter.”

More gunfire over the scanner. More screams and shouts. Kara found that the shakes were already lessening. How long before she could get up and walk?

“I need to get out there and help all those people!” Peter said. “Maybe if I surrender, they’ll stop shooting!”

“No, Peter,” Sharon said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

Peter twisted out of her grip. “I’ll kill you,” he snarled.

“Will you?” Sharon drew herself up to her full height. Even though she was half a head shorter than Peter, she seemed to tower over him. “I could beat you to death five times before you threw a single punch at me. Now back away.”

Peter stared at her for a long moment. Try, Pete! Kara thought, pushing herself up to hands and knees. I’ll back you! Or try.

But Peter dropped his eyes and backed away. Kara’s heart sank. Sharon snorted and gave him a contemptuous glance. The crack and pop of gunfire boomed from the scanner, and Kara tried not to imagine bleeding corpses piling up on the deck. Sharon, meanwhile, grabbed Peter’s arm. Something metal flashed in her hand. In a single swift movement, she clicked a handcuff to Peter’s wrist and snapped the other inside the duffel.

“What the hell?” Peter gasped, shaking his wrist.

“You’re a hostage now,” Sharon said. “Actually you’ve always been one—you were just too blind to see it. It won’t take those marines long to chew through your people, so let’s get moving.” She hauled him unprotesting toward the door leading to the other exit—the newly made one, Kara assumed. The scanner continued to spout the cold crackle and crunch of an ongoing massacre. Sharon reached the door. Kara tried to get to her feet, using the wall for support. The cure for the plague was in the hands of a bomb-toting Cylon, and she had to do something. She pushed herself from hands and knees to just knees, then got one foot on the floor. So far, so—

Her legs gave out and she crashed back to the floor. Too much too soon. Sharon laughed at her and opened the door.

“Fight her, you frakking coward!” Kara shouted in a last-ditch effort. Or she tried to. What came out of her mouth made no sense at all.

“See you on the other side, Starbuck,” Sharon called over her shoulder. “Wherever that is.”

Then main door burst open and a dozen helmeted and face-plated marines poured into the storeroom, rifles at the ready “Freeze!”

It was Lee’s voice. Kara wanted to collapse with relief, but all she could do now was shake. Sharon turned to face them in her own doorway, wrenching Peter around in front of her.

“Go ahead and fire,” she said. “But Petey here is between you and me. So how good is your aim? Feeling a little shaky? Want a bit of babble?”

“I said, freeze!” Lee barked. “We’ve got you, Sharon. There’s nowhere to go.”

Sharon yanked open the duffel bag and showed Lee the ordnance inside. Peter was cuffed to it, and the timer showed a countdown of twenty-two minutes and ten seconds… nine… eight.

“Let’s play hide and seek, Captain Adama,” she said with a winsome smile. “Just you and me. You need Peter alive to cure the plague. I want a shuttle off this ship. Count to a hundred, then come find us to talk about it.”

And she vanished into the dark beyond the door, dragging Peter with her.