ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

PART SEVEN

Days passed with no result. Aeneas had almost lost hope and was beginning to consider how he might report his failure to Adama when, on the last day before Columbia was scheduled to turn back for home, something was detected.
“Coming up on it now, my lord,” Colonel Akamas informed Aeneas as the commander arrived on the bridge, having been called from his evenmeal. “We’re down to ten percent lightspeed, range is approximately 100,000 maxims. I’ve ordered yellow alert.”
“Good. Call Captain Apollo to the bridge, if you will, Colonel. I want him to see this. What exactly is it you’ve found?”
“A dead star, my lord, radiating very faintly in the far infrared. A binary with the star system we’re in. Our warp scouts report it has five warp portals associated with it; they’re heading out to investigate those now. It also has this,” Akamas concluded, switching one of the monitors to show what was in orbit around the dead star. “An artificial construct, a three-dimensional framework nearly five maxims in diameter at its widest point. Definitely some kind of base.”
“Cylon?”
“It doesn’t look Cylon,” Akamas admitted. “But it’s definitely in the right area.”
In a few centons Apollo joined them on the command platform. “What’s happening, Commander?”
“We seem to have found something. Hopefully what we’ve come here to find,” said Aeneas.
As the battlestar closed on the base, its scanners were able to provide increasingly detailed information. There was no detectable power source on the base; it was absolutely dead. The outer fringes of the vast framework appeared frayed, giving the entire object the appearance of some kind of gigantic snowflake, or a piece of complex lacework. It was curiously beautiful.
“It’s been damaged,” Akamas said. “Doesn’t look like damage from weapons, though, and who attacks the Cylons?”
Aeneas shook his head as more and more information poured in and onto the monitors. “It’s not Cylon. It’s just old. The design is completely alien and so are the materials. Some kind of strange composite.”
“Yes, but the center area,” said Apollo, pointing. “It’s not damaged. If we focus the scanners there….”
The Columbia’s flight officer did so, with immediately rewarding results. “It’s been repaired with Cylon materials,” Akamas announced. “Look. Prefab Cylon modules, here, here, and here. Fueling facilities, repair docks, supply modules…and some pressurized modules as well. No longer pressurized.”
“And likely not abandoned very long,” said Aeneas. “There’s no sign of damage and there are residual heat readings in several areas.”
“Ion trails, sir,” the flight officer pointed out on a navigational display. “Several months old, but definitely Cylon. Baseship sized.”
“Are we going to take a closer look, my lord?” Akamas asked.
“After coming all this way I should think so. Take command personally, Colonel. Captain Apollo, you’ll go as well. Set up a full exploration team. Armed, just in case. Be quick, but thorough.”
“Yes, my lord.”

The exploration team met in the Columbia’s armory to equip themselves for their mission. Standard garb consisted of armored spacesuits and a variety of lasers and electromagnetic guns. It had been a long time since Apollo had suited up, so a couple of Columbia’s marines helped him and painstakingly checked his suit and equipment. He was armed with a laser rifle, attached to a powered mount that normally held it out of the way behind his back but could swing it up on order so he could use it. Once he was familiar with its operation he accepted his helmet from one of the marines and was about to head out of the room and towards the waiting shuttles, only to bump into Miriam, who was finishing suiting up herself.
“You’re going?” he asked.
“Of course I’m going,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I’m leading the second exploration team.”
Apollo’s emotions had been in turmoil ever since he had come on board and been presented with his unexpected daughter. The situation was hopeless. Even if Miriam could escape her sealing, he knew very well that she would never consent to a sealing with him. She liked him, but Apollo bore no illusions that the emotion might be love; his feelings for her were similar. Their opposing personalities and viewpoints precluded any improvement in the situation. His emotions for the child were purer, untouched by any disagreement or difference of origin. He did not think it right that Miriam was endangering herself in this way.
“You shouldn’t go,” he said. “Something could happen.”
He was prepared to flinch back from her wrath, but she said quietly, so the other people getting suited up couldn’t overhear, “I wouldn’t be here at all except for what happened to the fellow that took my place. I’m with you on this, Apollo—I think children need their parents. Right now I don’t have a choice. This is my duty. Once they find someone to take my place—I keep hoping they’ll promote Sarpedon, gods know he deserves it—you can be certain I’ll take better care of myself. You have my word of honor on that.”
“I didn’t mean to…jump you with it.”
“No, it’s all right. I understand your motives. I happen to share them. She is our daughter.”
“She is that,” Apollo agreed, with a slight smile. If only things were different, he thought, but like Mother says, if wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets.

Two shuttles carried the exploration teams, consisting of ten persons each, to the alien structure that had been appropriated by the Cylons. As they approached, Apollo, copilot of one of the shuttles, watched in fascination as more and more detail became evident. The object was truly alien; it had no relation to anything the Colonials had previously encountered and, judging by the damage that appeared to have been caused by collisions with small wandering bodies, it was incredibly old. One of the Columbia’s scientists was watching over his shoulder, and he asked her, “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” the woman admitted. “It almost looks as if it was grown rather than constructed. I’ll have to wait to examine it directly to come to any conclusions, but it’s certainly far beyond anything we or the Cylons could produce.”
“And,” said Akamas, who was sitting behind the pilot, “one must wonder what else a civilization that could produce that could come up with.”
“A civilization so advanced ought to have left other traces,” said Apollo.
“We’ve never explored out too far in this direction. And it’s a very big galaxy,” the scientist said. “We and the Cylons occupy only a relatively small part of one spiral arm.”
The two shuttles latched onto the structure several hundred metrons from one another. One shuttle’s crew would explore the fueling depot and docking areas, while the team led by Colonel Akamas and Apollo would check out the once-pressurized modules that were strung, like beads on a necklace, along one of the radiating arms of the enormous framework.
There was no gravitation outside of that created by the shuttle’s drive field, so Colonel Akamas’ first act was to have one of Columbia’s marines fire a tetherline across the open space between the shuttle and first module. The tetherline’s anchor clung to the metal of the Cylon-constructed pod with a powerful molecular bond that the full power of the shuttle’s engines would have been hard-pressed to break. Although their suits had their own propulsion units it was just as easy to pull themselves along the line to the pod and so conserve fuel for possible need later.
Scanning the material the alien artifact was composed of, the scientist remarked, “Very strange. Some kind of polymer containing long filaments. Obviously produced in zero-G. Extruded, I think.”
“Can you tell how old it is?” Apollo asked.
“It will take some analyses to come up with a definite answer, but I’d say it’s at least a million yahrens old. It could be much older.”
“Likely whoever built it is extinct,” Akamas said, and on that sobering note they proceeded to the open airlock of the first Cylon module.
The pod, a fairly standard prefabricated unit, had been fastened to the arm of the alien webwork by wrapping long carbon fiber cables around it and the arm, simple but effective. Following standard procedure, one of Columbia’s marines was first inside and, when he pronounced it empty, the others followed.
The module had seemingly been a storage pod. Inside they found only a few scattered crates floating about, containing odds and ends, none of them of any interest. The pod had once possessed an artificial gravity field, but it was long since deactivated.
The pod was coupled to the next in line by an open airlock. The second pod proved to be as empty as the first. Apollo looked around at the strange shadows cast by their suitlights and wondered how the other team was fairing. He hoped they were finding something useful. So far the mission seemed to be a failure.
A third pod was hooked in line, and once again one of the marines went in first. Through the open airlock door they could see his light moving about. There was a centon of silence, then the man said, his voice noticeably shaky, “I think you’d better see this, sir.”
Apollo and Akamas exchanged looks, then Akamas pulled his way into the pod, followed by Apollo, and then the rest of the team.
This pod was not empty. It proved to contain racks of transparent tubes, each long enough and wide enough to contain a human body. And each did indeed contain a body, perfectly preserved by the cold of space.
To Apollo it looked sickeningly like a Cylon version of an insect collection. The bodies had been packed neatly into the tubes, each one with a printed label in Cylon glyphs. The body nearest him was that of a woman, clad in an orange ground crew jumpsuit. The absence of visible wounds except for a slight amount of blood around her nose and mouth suggested that she had died of explosive decompression. Apollo was on her left, so he could not see which ship’s insignia was on the right sleeve of her jumpsuit.
He turned to the other side of the aisle, to be confronted by a more gruesome sight. The woman ground crewman might almost have been asleep, but the body in this tube was mutilated. The man had been a pilot and a laser had all but severed him at the waist. Although his uniform was charred and damaged, the patch on the right sleeve of his flight jacket was still visible, and it was the insignia of the battlestar Rycon. Apollo knew then that they were among the victims of the battle of Molecay, for the Rycon had been lost there, along with the Bellerophon and the Pegasus. As confirmation, the next body he checked was that of an officer in a blue command uniform with the Bellerophon’s insignia.
“About a hundred bodies,” the scientist said, her normal detachment somewhat disturbed. “Decompression, many of them.”
“Why?” Akamas asked the uncaring universe.
“When you’re dealing with the Cylons…who knows why they do things?” Apollo replied.
“Trying to find better ways to kill us, no doubt,” one of the marines muttered angrily.
The next pod contained the same grim cargo, racks of tubes packed with Colonial dead. Apollo watched Akamas run his eyes over them, his expression fixed but angry, as if trying to memorize the sight so he could bring it readily to mind the next time he confronted the Cylons. Then his expression changed. He leaned closer to a tube, redirected his suit lights, and said, “Captain, come look at this.”
Apollo joined the Columbia’s exec. Akamas reached over and touched a contact on the wristpad of Apollo’s suit, changing his radio frequency so they could converse privately. “What is it, Colonel?”
“This body. Look at it.” As Apollo did so and winced, Akamas said, “I know, it’s not…pretty. But do you think…do you think that could be Hector?”
Commander Hector had been CO of the battlestar Bellerophon, and he had been the pride and glory of Sagitara. A brilliant young officer, he had seemed destined from the very beginning of his career for the highest commands. Some felt that he was the one man who could unite the Colonies and the military to finally destroy the Cylons. But he had gone into Molecay under Cain’s command and he had never come back.
The body was badly injured but part of the face was intact. Apollo said, “I didn’t know him that well, but yes, that could be him. He’s the right size, right color of hair, right eyes.”
“Do these tubes move?”
“Let’s find out.” Apollo gripped the tube—it had transparent handholds molded in—and using the propulsion system of his suit, carefully backed away. The tube slid neatly out of its rack and Apollo hastily applied reverse thrust to keep from floating across the central corridor and colliding with the tubes on the other side.
The rest of the team had noticed what Apollo was doing and they gathered around as Akamas studied the body from the previously hidden side. The right arm had been missing, but the left was intact, and on the cuff of the blue uniform was the thick silver stripe of a battlestar commander.
“Prince Hector,” Akamas whispered.
The sight of the fallen leader’s body affected the Columbia crewmen as nothing before had. They seemed to slump even as they hung there in zero-G. Apollo could see distressed faces behind visors. Even after the disaster of Molecay, perhaps the lack of bodies had suggested that somehow Hector and his famous ship had somehow escaped. It had been possible, in some illogical part of the human mind, to deny the certainty of his death. That was no longer possible.
Akamas switched back to the common comm frequency and told the rest of them, “This is Hector. We will take him home to Sagitara with us.”
Moved, Apollo watched as each of the Sagitarans floated up to the tube, laid a respectful hand on it, then drifted back to make room for the next. Akamas turned his back after a centon, head down. Then, even through the thick suit, Apollo saw him react to something. Apollo released Hector’s tube, which a few of the Sagitarans took and started to bear out of the pod towards the shuttle, and he went to Akamas’ side. He began to ask what was wrong, but first looked at what Akamas was staring at.
It was the body of a young woman, dressed in blues, undamaged apart from blood around her nose and mouth. Her dark brown eyes were open, staring blankly out into the void, the dark brown curls around her unlined, beautiful face somewhat mussed. On her sleeve was the Bellerophon’s insignia. Apollo looked over at Akamas, watched unheeded tears running down the man’s normally unmoved face. Wife, lover, friend? he wondered.
“You knew her?” Apollo asked, reaching over to touch his shoulder.
“My sister,” Akamas said. “My baby sister….”

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