THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

CHAPTER 13

Ares had gotten into the habit every afternoon on his off time of walking to a nearby square in Gamoray City where a market had been set up. It was a pleasure to get away from Xaviar’s dour presence and stroll aimlessly among the brightly colored canopies dotted about the square, under which people displayed the wares they had for sale. He’d already purchased a beautifully patterned hand-woven scarf to take back to his mother, and now was searching for something suitable for his sister. As he riffled through a tray of polished stones he ate a hot pastry he’d bought at another stand and made small talk with the woman who was selling the stones. Meeting Gamoray’s people, he’d learned, tended to undemonize them...except for the occasional military types he saw. Those, he did not like. All of them reminded him of the three toughs who had attacked them, conscienceless fanatics, lovers of war and death.
Looking up a centon from the stones, he noticed the woman staring across the square at a passing warrior wearing a beige uniform with the Pegasus’ insignia on the sleeve. Ares thought she was likely old enough to be original crew and asked her, “Were you on the Pegasus at Molecay?”
“Yes, I was,” she said. “I was an avionics tech.” Her eyes shifted back to the warrior. “Not like that, though.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head almost imperceptibly and Ares dropped the subject. He bought several small, blue stones from her that he thought might make a nice bracelet, and as he was leaving the stand with them tucked neatly into the inner pocket of his flight jacket he bumped into a tall woman wearing traditional Scorpian dress, a long flowing cloak completely covering whatever she wore under it, with a hood drawn up to cover her hair. “My pardon, Lieutenant,” the woman said.
Ares thought her accent not particularly Scorpian, though he couldn’t quite place it. From what he could see of her she was an attractive woman, with green eyes and a fair complexion. Though her hair was hidden, judging from her eyebrows it was red. “No trouble,” he replied.
“I noticed the stones you bought. Perhaps I can tell you something about them. I know much about geology.”
The request struck Ares as being odd, but he brought out the little parcel of stones and unwrapped them, pouring them into the palm of his left hand, which he held out for inspection. She leaned closer and poked amongst the stones with a long, delicate forefinger.
“We’ve been watching you,” the woman said softly. “I’m inclined to trust you, though I don’t know why. You must not tell your Colonel Xaviar of this meeting, nor must you inform anyone of these meeting except face-to-face. We need to make contact with someone senior. It is of vital importance. These are the coordinates. You must not write them down, you must remember them. 047, 751, 630, 210. Repeat them to me.”
Ares did. He had a quick memory.
“Tomorrow at moonset, stealthed. Someone must be there,” the woman said. In a more conversational tone of voice, she concluded, “A very good purchase, Lieutenant. Those stones will bring you good fortune.” With a slight nod of her head she turned away and shortly vanished amongst the people thronging the market.

“I didn’t see her that well,” Ares explained to Aeneas and the other commanders gathered in Triumph’s briefing room. It was lucky that Xaviar had accepted his excuse that he wanted to see his father. “She was tall, though. Good looking, I thought. Green eyes, probably red hair. Funny accent, though. It wasn’t Scorpian, for sure. Aerian, maybe.”
Aeneas snapped his fingers. “Aisling. It has to be.” He explained to Ares, “She was Cain’s second officer. We’ve been wondering what happened to her.”
“A resistance movement,” Miriam said. “Interesting.”
“Kinda romantic. Like a holodrama,” Starbuck could not resist saying.
“We need to get someone down there to meet these people,” Aeneas said. “We still have those strikers on the planet, don’t we?”
“Still there,” Akamas confirmed. “No armament other than their internal gun and laser, though.”
“But they do have their stealth generators?” Akamas nodded. To Miriam, Aeneas said, “You go. It’s not far from Gamoray City. You’ll use two strikers. File a flight plan, you go stealthed and diverge and land, the other striker can use its ECM to look like two aircraft. On the return leg of the flight plan you rejoin.”
“A little complex, but it should work,” said Miriam.

When she’d made the mistake of asking Aglaia for some sort of explanation about the flight they were scheduled to make, Rhiannon’s squadron commander had shot back, in the usual exasperated tone of voice she tended to use around her, “Just follow orders!” Trailing the older woman out to the flight line, Rhiannon glared at her back. Some people, she thought. Of course maybe she knows as little as I do. That’s the kind of thing that usually sets her off; she likes to be so all-knowing all the time.
Aglaia’s weapons officer was already doing the external preflight on her striker; Rhiannon felt a little odd having to go up solo. It always seemed strange to fly around with an empty seat, as she’d done for the display and the one or two times since they’d been permitted to fly aimlessly around over the empty countryside near Gamoray City.
“Everything normal?” she asked her crewchief.
“Everything normal,” Sergeant Toron agreed, handing over his pocket computron so she could code the release form. “The number two drop tank is dented where Falkis ran the tow tractor into it, I’m not entirely thrilled about the looks of the port horizontal tail—think it’s starting to come delaminated on the trailing edge—and your lovely artwork on the nose is flaking. Philos must’ve used a very inferior brand of paint.”
“Hell!” Rhiannon exclaimed, stepping closer to look. “So it is. I’m going to get him for that.”
“Other than that, ready to go.”
Rhiannon entered her personal code into the computron to accept the aircraft and handed it back to him. As he clipped it to his belt, Toron remarked, “Didn’t know you were flying with anyone.”
“I didn’t think I was,” she said, turning to look as another pilot, dressed as she was in a black flight suit, helmet in hand, came up to join them. The crew chief snapped to attention as he recognized her.
“As you were, Sergeant,” Miriam said. “Well, are we ready?”
“I, um, just have to do my walk-around,” Rhiannon said. “Nobody told me....”
“It’s a secret—and I am not here, Sergeant, is that clear?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“Tell your ground crew,” she added. “Let’s look it over and get it off the ground,” she told Rhiannon.
They did their walkaround and rendezvoused, to Rhiannon unexpectedly, at the left side of the nose where she was about to go up the ladder to her side of the cockpit. “Oh no,” Miriam said, “other side. Let your mother keep her aging hand in, eh?”
Cautiously, Rhiannon said, “Do you think Noday....”
“What Noday doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her. Other side.”
Obediently Rhiannon ducked under the aircraft’s nose and climbed up into the weapons officer’s unfamiliar seat. Strapping in, she asked, “Mother, what is this about?”
As she pulled on her helmet and fastened it, Miriam replied, “A secret mission, actually. Which ought to appeal to your well-developed sense of adventure.”
“Seriously?”
“Very.” Together, they ran down the checklist, started the engines, and very shortly were airborne.
Miriam tucked in neatly behind and to the left of Aglaia’s striker. It had been a long time since she had flown and longer since she’d done much formation flying, but to Rhiannon she betrayed very few ragged edges. Certain that her mother wasn’t going to hit anything, Rhiannon took the opportunity to sightsee a little. It was just past sunset and Gamoray City was a glow on the horizon behind them as they flew out over the countryside. Gamoray’s small moon, a tiny sliver almost lost in the afterwash from the sunset, was about to follow the sun below the horizon. Below them were rolling, forested hills, broken occasionally by streams and even rivers, all of it beautiful and wild and lonely. Rhiannon shared in full the Sagitaran love of nature, and she wondered if she’d ever get the chance to explore those wild-looking places. Likely not, she thought regretfully, then wondered, somewhat tardily, if Leah enjoyed that sort of thing, hiking and camping and hunting and sailing and getting dirty and having interesting times. Rhiannon supposed she’d better ask her soon.
“All right,” Miriam said, breaking into her thoughts, “our turning point is coming up in two centons, mark. Running lights off; configure for stealth.”
Rhiannon didn’t have time to ask questions; she wasn’t completely familiar with the controls on the right side of the cockpit and it took her a centon to make certain of what she was doing. “Ready for stealth,” she was finally able to report.
“Good. Six, five, four, three, two, one, mark.”
“Stealthed,” Rhiannon reported, and noted at that instant that Aglaia blinked her formation lights once, apparently in confirmation. Miriam banked away and shortly the other aircraft’s lights faded into the distance behind them. Dropping to a lower altitude, Miriam slowed down and watched her navigation display closely, the numbers flickering as they changed.
“Switch to gravitics,” Miriam said.
Rhiannon activated the gravitic drive and as it took over the turbines dropped down to idle. Miriam slowed more and more until they were hovering over the trees at perhaps fifty metrons altitude. She turned the nose of the striker a bit to the left and eased forward, very slowly. Suddenly a clearing appeared below them. Peering down, Rhiannon hoped it was striker-sized. It was certainly going to be close.
“All right, secure for landing,” Miriam said, and Rhiannon shut off the turbines so they wouldn’t ingest any debris on landing. Miriam lowered the landing gear, swept the wings all the way back so the striker would take up less space, and slowly dropped down, past the trees, until the wheels touched ground with a slight thump.
“Systems off,” she said, and Rhiannon complied. The gravitic drive switched off, rather abruptly as gravitics were wont to do, and one by one the cockpit displays faded into darkness. Miriam hit the canopy release and the two sides of the canopy hissed upward on their hydraulics.
The air thus admitted into the cockpit was cool and sweet and the soft sounds of the night came to them over the faint stirrings of wind in the trees, strange calls of strange animals, the chirpings of insects. Rhiannon took a deep breath. “Peaceful,” she said, then noticed her mother looking at her.
Miriam smiled. “Sometimes I worry about you. Perhaps I don’t need to.” She unfastened her harness and climbed down out of her side of the cockpit. Rhiannon followed suit, but before she descended to the ground she unclipped the assault rifle fixed behind her seat and slung it over her shoulder. She came around the nose to meet her mother and asked softly, “Are we meeting someone?”
Miriam nodded, and just then figures appeared dimly amidst the trees at the edge of the clearing. Strongly tempted to raise her rifle and aim it at them, Rhiannon resisted the impulse, but she resettled the sling on her shoulder. Her mother took off her helmet and as she did so one of the vaguely seen figures stepped out into the clearing, a tall woman wearing a flowing cloak, its hood back to uncover long red hair glowing in the last faint pink tinges of sunset.
“Captain Miriam Poliorcetes,” the woman commented, almost to herself. “Only it must be Commander now, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Miriam confirmed. “Hello, Aisling.”
The others came out now from the forest, men and women both, even some children, perhaps twenty in all. A tall man moved to stand beside Aisling and Miriam nodded to him. “Colonel Tolen.”
He smiled. “Thought you’d remember me.”
Miriam looked them over, then said, “Perhaps you can solve some mysteries for us. Gods know we’ve had few enough answers so far. I wish you’d made contact sooner.”
“It isn’t easy,” said Aisling. “It’s dangerous for us to go into the city, and we have only a limited number of mind-static devices.”
“Mind-static?”
“To prevent mindreading,” Tolen said. He raised a hand quickly against any possible objections and said, “Before you decide we’re crazy or deluded, hear us out.”
“I’m all ears,” said Miriam. Checking her timepiece, she added, “However, we have only half a centare before I have to take off to make rendezvous.”
“We’ll make it as quick as possible,” said Aisling. “After the battle of Molecay, we came here. You know that much.” Miriam nodded. “We were here perhaps a yahren, raiding the Cylons to live, when suddenly they left. We presume now that you were the cause of that. We decided to settle the planet.”
“Who decided and why?” Miriam asked.
“All of us,” said Tolen. “We didn’t know the situation of the Colonies, we knew the Pegasus wouldn’t make it that far without major repairs, and...there is something to be said for new beginnings.”
“The trend of the war was pretty obvious,” said Aisling. “We didn’t know if we’d have a home to go to even if we made it that far. At first it was like a paradise here. Imagine a society where all work is necessary, where everyone is cooperating towards a common goal. Not exactly everyday life in the Colonies.”
“And then Iblis came,” said Tolen.
“Who is he?”
“The devil,” Tolen said. “No, maybe not literally. I don’t know that I believe in that kind of thing. But evil. Definitely evil.”
“I curse the day I found him,” Aisling said bitterly. At Miriam’s look she nodded. “I was in charge of the expedition. Cain thought it best to reconnoiter the nearby systems and we’d found several Cylon and Delphian warships we could repair and use. We found him on an empty planet, alone with the wreck of a ship. Lieutenant Bojay found him, actually; I sent him down in charge of a landing party when we picked up the ship on our scanners. I always liked Bojay,” she mused. “He was a good enough pilot, and he had a knack for getting along with people. I don’t know what Iblis did to him or the shuttle crew, but when they got back he pulled a gun on me and took over.”
“When they returned to Gamoray,” Tolen picked up the story, “Bojay told Cain she’d panicked, refused to take Iblis on board. Which was untrue. And normally Cain would never have gone for it. Some of the other Scorpians on the Pegasus never liked her, but Cain knew she was a good officer. But Iblis was there, and Cain fell for it.”
“Are you suggesting...that this Iblis can control or affect people’s minds?” Miriam asked cautiously.
“We know he can,” Aisling said. “It’s the only thing that explains Bojay. It’s the only thing that explains Cain’s compliance. Cain would never, ever go for any of the things Iblis has done, if he had anything to do with it. But he doesn’t. Iblis controls him, totally. It’s a horrible thing,” she added. “To see a great man like that, reduced to a...a thing, a creature of Iblis’....”
“From that day on, things changed,” said Tolen. “Suddenly we had Scorpian bigotry popping out everywhere. Strict interpretation of the holy books, women for reproduction only, that kind of thing.”
“Having children is one thing,” said Aisling, reaching out and drawing a tall young man close, a boy whose mixture of features was hers and Tolen’s, “having them out of love. But having them for duty, because someone tells you to, is something else. And the things they teach....”
“We had two Sagitaran techs we rescued from the Bellerophon’s crew,” said Tolen. “Two women, a mated pair. What they did to them...I won’t speak of it. Not in front of the children.”
“Some of us had to leave,” Aisling concluded sadly. “Some of us who believe that hatred and fear and intolerance are not moral values.”
“You live out here?”
Tolen nodded. “It’s good living. A little hard, but good. Most of the animal and plant life is not harmful to us and much of it is edible. We’re protected by our mind-static generators. Iblis can’t track us, nor can he when we go into the city.”
“What is Iblis’ range?”
“For detailed mind-reading or influence, very close,” said Aisling. “Ten metrons, maybe. General things he can detect at very long ranges. How long, I don’t know.”
“How did you develop this mind-static device?”
“That’s interesting,” said Aisling. “We didn’t. The Delphians did, we’re not sure why. We merely adapted things they left behind.”
“All right, what’s the drill? What is Iblis up to?”
“When we came down to Gamoray, we captured a lot of things intact or repairable,” said Tolen. “Shipyards, factories, things the Cylons had captured from the Delphians and converted to their own uses. When we first came here we were going to build ships to establish contact with the Colonies. Iblis started building warships.”
“And reactivating every robot he could find,” Aisling added. “He wants the Colonies.”
“What about Cylons?”
“Well,” Tolen said, “we all know how the Cylons reproduced...and they had a factory here. It was damaged but repairable. It wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve fixed it. We know where it is,” he said, and handed her a paper with the rough coordinates and a sketch map of the area. On the back was the location of the system where Iblis had been found. Miriam folded it carefully and tucked it into a pocket in her flight suit.
“Do the people approve of this?” she asked.
Aisling shook her head emphatically. “No. Don’t make war on them, Commander; they live in fear or ignorance, only rarely in acquiescence. And Cain doesn’t know, he really doesn’t. Iblis feeds him a line and he has to believe it. Bojay and the command types and their vicious young warriors—they are your enemy. And Iblis, though I don’t know if he can be killed. We doubt he’s human.”
Rhiannon had been listening, utterly fascinated. Now, reluctantly, she said “It’s almost time, Mother.”
Aisling smiled. “Miriam, is this your daughter?”
“Yes, this is one of them, and she’s impossible.”
“Do you mean she takes after Dirce?”
“She definitely does—and don’t encourage her. Is there a way we can contact you?”
“Tight-beam laser on these coordinates,” said Tolen. “We’ll have someone here every day at local midnight for ten centons. It’s all we can risk.”
“One last thing. Cain’s daughter, what happened to her?”
“She’s Iblis’ pet. Not her fault, either, though she was weak,” Aisling said. “Iblis keeps her, I think, in case his control over Cain ever slips. He’ll have another hold over him that way.”
“All right. We’re sending more ships. I have to tell you this; we will not let the Colonies be endangered. When the war ended, we all took an oath, that we would commit genocide before we ever permitted a Cylon War to happen again.”
Aisling nodded. “Best to destroy the entire planet if you have to rather than let Iblis get to the Colonies. If that’s necessary, we can accept it.”
“I don’t want it to come to that. But if we’re dealing with Cylons again....”
Tolen took a small box from his son and handed it Miriam. “This is a mind-static device. Within its effective radius, Iblis cannot read minds.”
“Thank you,” Miriam said, accepting it. “For everything,” she added.
“Good luck,” Aisling said simply.
After they had rejoined formation with Aglaia and destealthed, Rhiannon commented dryly, “I suppose I didn’t see any of that, did I?”
“No, you did not,” Miriam confirmed.

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