ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

SECOND ENDING, LEADING INTO THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

“ANY FOOL CAN FOLLOW ORDERS”

On the upper screen, Adar was looking over his shoulder for Baltar. He had disappeared.

On Galactica’s bridge, Adama swallowed, hard. He was about to do something he could never have imagined doing. He was about to disobey a direct order. If I’m wrong, he thought, Adar will destroy me. But I’m not wrong. I am not wrong!
“Launch a full spread. Order the other battlestars to launch,” he said to Tigh.
The first of Galactica’s vipers were already out of their launch tubes before Tigh could reply, “Yes, sir!”

Akamas turned to Aeneas. “Sir, Galactica is launching.”
“Launch two squadrons of vipers. Let’s hold the rest back for a centon until we see how this is developing. And shut that off,” he ordered the flight officer, indicating the screen where Adar was yammering helplessly. “Stupid old bastard,” he added, glancing over at Aleksandros, waiting for a reaction.
Aleksandros was calmer than Aeneas would have expected. “If Adama is wrong…,” he began.
“Hang him, then. He’s not wrong, Aleksandros,” Aeneas said.
“My lord, something very odd,” Akamas reported. “We’re not detecting any incoming baseships.”
“No baseships?”
“Just fighters, I don’t know how many phalanxes yet. More than I’ve ever seen.”
Aeneas drummed his fingers for a centon on the command platform rail. “Put me through to Galactica, Fleet Comline Alpha.”
“You’re through, my lord,” the flight officer said.
“Commander, I believe the main enemy attack may lie elsewhere,” Aeneas said without preliminaries when Adama’s face appeared on the screen.
“Our home planets?”
“I suspect so, sir. Elsewise their baseships would be here.” There was a brief, irritating burst of interference. “What was that?” Aeneas asked, turning to look at Akamas. But it was Adama who answered.
“That was my son, Commander,” he said, suddenly looking very old.
Not Apollo! Aeneas thought, hurt. But there was no time. “Sir, we have to make some tactical decisions right now,” Aeneas said.
“I’m aware of that, Commander,” Adama replied. “We’re already informing the planets to go to a state of full alert. I’m going to order the Solaria to cover for us, and leave most of our vipers. We’ll make a run in towards the inner planets. They’ll be going for Sagitara and Caprica first, maybe Virgon.”
“Concur,” Aeneas agreed.
“Start laying in a course. We’ll beat off the sharp end here, then move out.”
“Aye, sir.” Aeneas signed off and told Colonel Klymene, “Lay in a course towards the inner planets. Give me some alternates.”
“Yes, my lord, working on it,” she replied, reaching up behind her right ear to activate her augmentor.
“Atlantia is coming under concentrated attack. She’s already heavily damaged,” the weapons officer said.
“Enemy fighters coming in,” said Akamas.
The bridge crew felt their own ship shudder under them. The lights flickered momentarily, then returned to full power.
“Hits on the port side,” Akamas said.
“Get damage control down there.”
Aeneas was concentrating on the damage reports when a shocked hush fell over the bridge. He looked up, asked apprehensively, “What was that?”
“The flagship, my lord,” the flight officer said simply. On the scanner readout, where the Atlantia had been was only an expanding pattern of gas and debris.
“The other ships?” he asked after a centon.
“Under attack but holding their own, sir. Every ship except the Atlantia got off a full spread of vipers, and they are cleaning house,” the flight officer reported.
The tactical displays seconded his opinion. The Cylons had expected no resistance and they were being butchered left and right.
“Courses ready, sir,” Klymene reported. “On your tactical display.”
Akamas studied them, transmitted two to the Galactica. In a centon, Adama came back on line.
“Plan two,” Adama said. “Caprica planetary defense reports enemy base ships on long range scanners, closing on inner planets. Transmitting to your tactical….”
Akamas studied the results. “We have a problem,” he decided.
“Not as much as it looks, Aeneas. The planetary defenses are up and ready. And they didn’t expect resistance. We’re seeing that already. And they’ll be very short on raiders.”
“Indeed.” Already the broken Cylon ranks were beginning to turn and run, a pathetic group of battered survivors looking for succor.
“We’ll take the ones over Caprica first, then Sagitara. Sagitara has better planetary defenses than Caprica,” Adama said.
“Yes, sir.”
“Galactica and Columbia will take on the ones approaching Caprica. Pacifica will delay the ones over Sagitara until we get there. Solaria to back her up once she’s finished recovering any vipers we leave here. Start recalling your vipers, Commander.”
“Yes, sir. You heard the Commander,” Aeneas told the flight officer. “Order our vipers to return. Ground crews to turn them around as fast as possible. All strikers to be fitted for ship-to-ship action.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Aeneas glanced back at Aleksandros, who had been watching silently. Their eyes met, then Aleksandros said, “I was wrong.”
“A lot of people were. I think your motivations were aboveboard,” Aeneas allowed.
“This war….”
“Has gone on far too long,” Aeneas agreed. “We think so too. We just know there’s only one way to end it.”
“When every Cylon is dead.”
“Yes.”
Aleksandros nodded. Then he remarked, “Commander Adama did not follow orders.”
Aeneas smiled. “Any idiot can follow orders, Aleksandros. The important thing is to know when not to.”

The battle in the Colonial star systems against the Cylons lasted for almost a full secton. After the initial attacks against the inner planets of Caprica, Sagitara, and Virgon were beaten off, the Cylons pretended to pull back, then descended with renewed ferocity on several of the less well defended Colonies. While the inner planets had all suffered losses, some severe—two cities on Sagitara were entirely destroyed—some of the outer planets took horrendous casualties, Aeries in particular, where much of a hemisphere was rendered more or less permanently uninhabitable when two Cylon baseships dropped down to low altitude and demolished everything in range of their guns, finishing by spraying radionactive coolant from their reactors over the countryside. The two ships had then self-destructed over the most populous cities on the planet. The destruction and casualties were almost beyond belief.
When it was over and the Cylons had pulled out of the Colonial systems, it was time to tally the losses. The battlestar Atlantia had been destroyed at the ambush; later, the Solaria had been lost pursuing the base ships that were ravaging Aeries. Galactica had been fearfully damaged but appeared to be repairable, leaving Columbia and Pacifica, both of which had damage of their own, as the only two truly effective capital ships in the fleet. The losses among smaller vessels had been terrible, and the number of vipers and strike fighters lost was astronomical. But that was nothing compared to the lives, both military and civilian, lost.
On two planets—one of them Aeries, to no one’s surprise—the planet’s Council members had been promptly lynched the instant they had made the mistake of appearing in public. There was no doubt that every other member save Adama would immediately lose his seat once elections could be held.
The member of Council for Gemoni, Count Baltar, suffered a more salutary fate.

A small group of Columbia’s marines, in platoon strength, were moving through the wreckage of a small town on Caprica near Caprica City, searching for survivors. They found none. Those who had not been killed in the initial attack seemed to have fled and not yet returned. Houses that had been left undamaged by the attack stood open. Evening meals rotted on tables, bedclothes were turned down, glasses sat on tables next to chairs in front of holovisors, where people must have been watching the broadcast from the Presidium when the attack began.
Miriam, who had been put in charge of the platoon due to the shortage of officers (a number of Columbia’s marines had been killed putting down a riot in Caprica City proper), found it all very surreal, the silence of empty houses, some untouched, some demolished. She wondered if anyone was ever going to come home.
One of the platoon corporals scurried up to report. Although his uniform and combat armor were filthy from days in the field, his weapons were clean and his salute sharp. “Sir!” he said.
“Report, Corporal.”
“Sir, we’ve found the wreckage of a Cylon ship.”
“A raider?”
“A shuttle, sir. We’re surrounding it now.”
“Interesting. Let’s go see. Sergeant!” she called down the street to her second-in-command.
“Sir?” Sergeant Asina called back.
“Corporal Hermes and his squad have found a Cylon shuttle. I’d like another squad to assist in forming a perimeter…just in case.”
“Yes, sir.” She activated the radio built into her helmet. “B squad, report to Ekron Street and Eighth.”
In a few centons, the eight members of B squad trotted into view, weapons, a mixture of lasers for Cylons and assault rifles in case of looters, held at the ready.
“Lead the way, Corporal,” Miriam said.
Several streets over, they came to a small park. The once-trim trees were shattered and stripped of their foliage, the grass was burned to a sere brown, and the play equipment was battered and broken. Corporal Hermes’ squad had assumed firing positions behind cover, their weapons trained on the shuttle that had come to rest with its nose buried in a small pond.
“Someone shot the bastard down,” Sergeant Asina noted approvingly, indicating the laser scars that stitched the shuttle’s rear section. She unslung her laser rifle. “Griff, Aleta, cover me.”
The two marines moved to do so as Sergeant Asina, laser rifle held ready, scuttled across the park, ducking from cover to cover, until she had her back against the shuttle next to its hatch. Carefully trying the hatch, finding it either locked or jammed, she stepped back and fired a bolt into its locking mechanism. Freed of whatever had kept it closed, the hatch slowly hissed open. Marines Griff and Aleta held their weapons at the ready as Asina peered into the shuttle.
“Captain?” she called.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“You should come and see this.”
Curious, Miriam did so, as Asina went into the shuttle.
“Look,” Asina commented as she came back out, “what a pile of shit I found,” and shoved Count Baltar out the hatch. Baltar tripped over the hatch coaming and landed face down in the mud.
Miriam smiled happily. “Count Baltar,” she said. “How…fortuitous that we should capture you.”
Baltar looked up cautiously. He had been living in the shuttle since it had been shot down the night of the attack; he had been unable to get the hatch open and his Cylon pilots had been destroyed in the crash. He had come to Caprica planning on gloating happily over the ruins of Adama’s home, only to be confronted with the utter and total ruin of his plans. “And who are you?” Baltar asked cautiously.
“Captain Miriam Poliorcetes, Gamma squadron commander, battlestar Columbia. And you are the bastard who sold your race out to the Cylons. That,” Miriam observed, “is treason. Is it not, Sergeant?”
“My lady, that is treason,” Sergeant Asina agreed.
“And we know how to deal with treason, do we not, Sergeant?”
“We do indeed,” Asina agreed. She hauled Baltar to his feet; she was stronger than one might have suspected from looking at her. The marines had been issued with plastic wrist ties in case they needed to arrest looters or rioters, and she fastened Baltar’s hands together.
“You’re cutting off my circulation,” Baltar complained as she pulled them tight.
“I don’t believe that will be a problem much longer,” Miriam remarked and Baltar froze.
“What?” he ventured.
“You know what. I’m going to take care of your astrum before the bleeding heart Capricans get here. Sergeant, tell off ten of your men. No need to ask for volunteers, I think.”
“They’ll all volunteer,” Asina agreed. “Let me find ten with rifles. I’ll be right back.”
The blood had drained from Baltar’s face. “You’re not…you’re not going to shoot me?” he croaked.
“That is exactly what I’m going to do.”
“But…but…but…I was forced to do what I did! The Cylons forced me! The real traitors are people like Adar and…and Adama…and Diomedes….”
Miriam stepped forward and slapped Baltar across the face. “Don’t you dare mention Commander Adama’s name, or my father’s, with Adar’s. And don’t you dare call them traitors, you bastard. I know treason when I see it.”
Baltar made an absurd lunge, trying to escape, and Miriam tripped him. He went down into the mud face first again. “Corporal Hermes, tie him to the shuttle.”
Hermes and another of the marines dragged Baltar to his feet again and fastened him to a convenient fixture on the side of the shuttle.
“And gag him. I don’t want to listen to his felgercarb any longer,” Miriam added.
Asina returned with ten marines armed with assault rifles in tow. Miriam addressed them, “This is Count Baltar, the member of Council for Gemoni, who betrayed his race to the Cylons. I intend to execute him. Anyone who objects can step back, without any prejudice.”
None of the marines stepped back.
“Very well. Form line. Set your weapons to single shot.”
Baltar was squirming, trying frantically to get free, and visibly losing control of his bodily functions.
“Can’t you even die like a man?” Miriam asked, disgusted. “No, I suppose not. Up rifles,” she ordered, and the ten marines raised their weapons to their shoulders. “Take aim….fire.”
The volley crashed out, and a few microns later the echo rocketed back across them from the surrounding empty buildings.
Asina asked Miriam, “Do you think we’re going to be court-martialed for this?”
“Are you afraid of that?”
“Actually, my lady, no. This would be a privilege to be court-martialed over.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“What should we do with that?” Asina went on, indicating Baltar’s slumped body.
Miriam looked around. “Your knife, Sergeant.” Asina handed Miriam her knife and Miriam went and cut Baltar’s body down. “See that trash can over there? Put him in there where he belongs.”
After they had dumped Baltar in the trash, Asina turned to Miriam. “What now, sir?”
Miriam studied Baltar’s body for a centon. “What now indeed, Sergeant. Now we go on and win.”

�1992, 2000 Susan J. Paxton
Originally published in ANOMALY 19

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