THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

CHAPTER 14

“This is getting more complicated every centon,” Starbuck remarked as he and Apollo waited in the Galactica’s electronics lab for the test results on the mind-static device given to Miriam by Tolen.
“Or weirder,” Apollo replied, looking at his friend. Starbuck had assumed a typical pose leaning against a doorway, arms crossed. If it had not been for his blue uniform it might have been thirty yahrens earlier, and they would have been young, with few responsibilities and fewer cares...what strange times those were, before the holocaust, Apollo reflected. You could feel the imminence...you knew something horrible was coming. You learned to live for the day...and some people never seem to have gotten over that. I’m no saint, but Starbuck still worries me.
Starbuck noticed his attention, inquired, “What’re you looking at?”
Smiling, Apollo replied, “You know, I was wondering about that.”
From behind a rack of test equipment emerged Dr. Wilker. They both knew Wilker from before the holocaust, at which time he had also been assigned to the Galactica as general science officer. Since then he had served aboard a number of ships and at some ground facilities, done research into cosmic ray sources aboard an exploration vessel, and now had come full circle back to the Galactica for what was his final tour of duty before retirement from the military. Wilker was holding the mind-static device. He commented, more to himself than to the two waiting commanders, “A very interesting device. Obviously of Delphian design, though the people you obtained it from made changes to make it easier to produce without machine labor.”
“Does it work?” Apollo wanted to know.
Wilker shrugged. “I don’t know,” he had to confess. “It puts out electromagnetic radiation on several very unusual wavelengths. It would seem to have no effect on human mental processes.”
Starbuck said, “I would hate to trust my life to that thing.”
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Apollo replied. “Can you duplicate this?” he asked Wilker.
“Certainly, no problem. We can make them smaller, more portable, and get longer battery life as well,” Wilker said confidently.
“Good. Get to it, then.”
“How many do you want?”
“Let’s say twenty to start.”
“We’ll get right on it, Commander. We should have the first ones ready late tomorrow.”

Rhiannon arrived aboard the Columbia late in a night shift and the ground crew immediately took her striker into charge. She watched incuriously for a few centons as they started removing the weapons-bay door so they could replace it with a reconnaissance pack, then she turned, stumbled wearily into a lift and punched in directions for beta deck, forward. For a centon she leaned against the lift wall until she realized she was about to fall asleep like that and pulled herself upright. The exhaustion didn’t surprise her. She’d been having sleeping problems ever since the incident with the Cylon, and meeting with the renegades had done nothing to reassure her. Perhaps she should have been pleased at being right about hearing a Cylon, but the whole thing horrified her.
She was unsurprised to find Leah’s day cabin dark, and when she poked her head through the door into the bedroom she saw her sleeping peacefully. The sight made her vaguely envious, but she thought, Let her sleep, it’s better that she doesn’t know. Rhiannon undressed as quietly as possible, slipped into the head to take a quick turbowash, then padded back out and very carefully, trying not to waken Leah, she slid into bed.
As she was adjusting the covers over herself she felt Leah snuggle up against her back and she could not help relaxing in the warmth. It was inexpressibly pleasant to be held, and it was not with too much regret that she said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’alright,” Leah murmured sleepily. “Hoping you would...didn’t know they’d sent you back.”
“Just for a while.”
Gradually coming to full wakefulness, Leah said, “Rhiannon, are you all right? You’re cold.”
“Tired,” Rhiannon sighed evasively.
“Rhiannon, is something wrong?”
Rhiannon turned her head a little to look at Leah; she saw concern in her eyes, and something else. She can’t know....
“Is there something you’re not supposed to tell me?” Leah asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, there’s something I’m not supposed to tell you. But the hell with it. This is what Caprica’s crew found over Gamoray....”
When they’d finished sharing confidences, they ended up looking at one another helplessly. “There’s going to be a war,” said Leah.
“Yes,” Rhiannon echoed hollowly, “there’s going to be a war.”

The shuttle descended towards Gamoray, sheets of glowing plasma whipping past its viewports as its deflectors cut through the rapidly thickening atmosphere. Seated among others in the passenger compartment were Cassiopiea and Miriam, who had just presented Cassiopiea with a gift.
“What,” Cassiopiea asked, examining the bracelet Miriam had given her, “is this?”
“It’s not very pretty, I’ll admit,” said Miriam, “but it’s strictly functional. It contains a device that will prevent your thoughts from being read.”
Placing it on her wrist, Cassiopiea said, “It’s a little large.”
“That’s as small as Apollo’s technical types could make it on short notice.”
Noday remarked to Miriam, “You never....gave me anything like that.”
“Good God, I should hope not,” said Miriam.
“May I ask who might be expected to want to read my mind?” Cassiopiea broke in.
“Cain’s friend, Count Iblis.”
Eyeing the other woman closely, Cassiopeia asked, “Now what is going on?”
“We have it from a very good source that this Count Iblis is not human and that he can read—and influence—minds. Obviously we want to shield you in case he’s close.”
“Does this thing work?”
“I hope it does,” Miriam said sincerely, then she showed Cassiopiea that she had a mind-shield of her own, fastened to her belt in a small pouch concealed by her dress uniform cape. “Iblis may be nowhere near, but if he is, we are protected from him.”
“If Iblis can read minds, and influence them, is he behind what’s happening on Gamoray?” Cassiopiea asked perceptively.
“We believe so.”
“That makes me feel a little better,” said Cassiopiea, obviously relieved. “I never believed Cain could be evil.”
What’s more evil than weakness? Miriam thought. She said, “I have something else for you,” and from the box resting on the seat beside her from which she had taken Cassiopiea’s bracelet she produced a medal. “This is the emblem of Cain’s family. I’m hoping if you give it to him he’ll wear it in preference to the one he now wears. In it is a mind-shield. If we can possibly break Iblis’ influence over him....”
“A good idea. And I think he’ll wear it,” Cassiopiea said, accepting it. As she tucked it away into the small purse she was carrying the shuttle settled down onto the landing pad at Gamoray’s spacedrome. Miriam waved Cassiopiea out of the shuttle ahead of her around the odd, unmarked pile of boxes occupying the center of the ship; the usual group of ground cars was waiting to take them and the other invited guests to Cain’s place in the country. Cassiopeia held back, pulled gently at Miriam’s sleeve and whispered to her, “Thank you.”
Miriam looked a little startled. “For what?”
“For not telling me how to do this.”
“I suppose some people would have been unable to resist. You know what the stakes are.”
“I do indeed.”
It always seemed to be sunset when they arrived at Cain’s house; the ground cars disgorged the visitors at the door and Colonel Bojay politely ushered them into the courtyard where tables of refreshments had been set up. This time the visitors had insisted on making some contribution to the festivities and Columbia’s kitchen staff had prepared a sampling of Sagitaran foods that found a place of honor amidst the Scorpian and native dishes. Several of the Pegasus crew they were used to meeting were already milling around the courtyard, but as yet there was no sign of Cain.
Nervously, Cassiopiea asked Miriam, “What if he doesn’t show?”
“We try again later. But he always has.” She added, “Can I get you something?”
“No, thank you. I don’t think I could eat.”
Surveying the food, Miriam commented dryly, “Unfortunately, I always can.”
“Now Miriam,” Noday admonished. To Cassiopiea she added, “Ignore her. She....has this self-image problem.”
Cassiopiea did not hear her; her entire attention was focused across the room, where a figure had just come through a doorway.
Cain.

Ares arrived at the spaceport just as the ground cars were leaving to take the visitors to Cain’s latest dinner party. Beyond the two recently-arrived shuttles were the four strikers from Columbia, looking as if they were secured for the night. But that appearance was quickly belied as ground crews emerged from the darkness, hooked two of them to tow tractors and set off in the direction of the nearby hangar. Other ground crew unloaded long, relatively thin boxes from one of the shuttles and carried them towards the same destination. As Ares watched the hangar doors opened, spilling a bright pool of light across the concrete, and the two aircraft disappeared within, the doors closing behind them and returning the flight line to its previous dimness.
At the small side door into the hangar he was accosted by one of Columbia’s marines, who was standing guard with a loaded rifle in his hands. “Halt,” the man snapped. “Identification?”
Ares produced his ID and held it up for the man to read. The marine nodded and said, “Pass, sir. You’re supposed to meet Lieutenant Rhiannon in the avionics shop.”
Pausing briefly to watch the proceedings around the strikers, Ares made his way to the back of the hangar, where a series of doors punctuated the back wall. One was clearly labeled, though in Scorpian script, AVIONICS. He went in.
Most of the shop was dark; Ares could make out racks of equipment and test benches. The only light came from a lamp over the nearest test bench. Rhiannon was waiting beside it, dressed in full flight suit, her helmet and gloves resting on the table beside her. A flight bag, stuffed full by its bloated appearance, was at her feet. Nudging it with a foot, she said, “Your flight suit. Get into it.”
“I was gonna ask what the hades is going on. They’re arming those two birds out there.” The long, thin boxes offloaded from the shuttles had proved to contain, as he had rather expected from their shape, missiles.
“We’re going on a mission.”
Ares gaped a little. “A mission?”
“Reconnaissance. Come on, get dressed.”
What kind of reconnaissance? he wondered, but suspected he’d get little more information out of Rhiannon just yet. It was likely that she didn’t know the details anyway. He stripped down to his underwear, glancing up once to see Rhiannon watching disinterestedly, which was what he expected, then pulled on his flight suit.
“I know this is a little sudden,” she said as he sat down on the cold concrete floor to draw on and lace up his flying boots, “but I didn’t want to fly with anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to,” he said honestly. “This is going to be unbelievably dangerous, isn’t it?”
“How’d you ever guess?”
“It’s what they use us for.”
“Being good has its bad points,” Rhiannon said glumly.
Ares had just finished lacing his boots and was still sitting on the floor when the door opened and Captain Aglaia and her weapons officer, Lieutenant Hoth, came in. As he scrambled to his feet the squadron commander said, “All right, this is what we’re doing. We know that the Cylons had a factory to produce centurions on this planet; we suspect Cain’s people have it back in working order. We know where it is, and we’re going to go take a look.”
Suddenly Ares was afraid. Very afraid. Suicide mission, he could not help thinking. He cast a quick glance at Rhiannon to see her reaction; her lack of same told him all he needed to know.
“You two have the recce pack; we’re your escort,” Aglaia continued. “It’s well within our range with drop tanks, so we won’t have to refuel. After our runs we’ll make direct for orbit and the Columbia.” From a pocket in her flight suit she took a map, which she laid out on the test bench, and a crystal she passed to Ares. “Your navigation data,” she explained as she flattened the map out. The four warriors bent over the map as she traced out their route. “I don’t know what kind of opposition we can expect, if any. We’ll be stealthed, of course, but we know if they suspect we’re around they’ll be using sound and infrared detection. It is absolutely essential that any information we obtain reach the Fleet Commander.” She looked up and met Rhiannon’s eyes. “That means, Lieutenant, that your first, last, and only priority is getting that information back. You are not to engage the enemy unless you are attacked and unless I cannot for whatever reason defend you. You are not to initiate combat. If you get into a combat situation you are to get out of it as soon as possible. Is that very clear, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, it is clear,” Rhiannon replied.
“All right. I can’t overemphasize how important this is, so I’ll refrain from sounding like a character in a cheap holodrama and telling you. Let’s go.”
The hangar door was open again and a tow tug was pulling Aglaia’s striker out, heavily burdened now with drop tanks and missiles. Their own striker, which the ground crew was hooking up to its own tow vehicle, carried just as many drop tanks but only two twin-tube missile packs, on the pylons fitted on top of the wing fairings.
“Rhiannon,” Ares asked cautiously, “is this the best time for this mission? It’s a month before we can expect reinforcements...and isn’t Cain having another one of his blasted parties tonight?”
“Ares, I have no influence on the timing of this,” Rhiannon replied heavily. “As for the party, I saw the people coming in. A bunch of second-stringers, mostly...my mother was the only one of the ship commanders there.”
It was now full dark outside and the ground crews were completing their preparations in the glow of some portable lights that had been brought to the flight line.
Wordless for once, Sergeant Toron handed over his pocket computron and Rhiannon coded the release form. As she handed it back to him, he finally said, “Bring my airplane back, Lieutenant.” Ares was not sure who initiated the hug that followed; it seemed a little out-of-character on both sides.
“If anything happens to me...,” Rhiannon began, a little reluctantly.
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Toron replied, his voice firm. “But I will watch out for your lady,” he added.

For a time Cassiopiea felt content just to observe Cain from the fringes. He had not noticed her immediately and it gave her time to watch his interaction with others. From what she could see he seemed his usual self, extroverted, charming, boastful in a slightly self-deprecating manner, loving the attention he drew from the group of admiring warriors who surrounded him. Behind her she heard Miriam comment to Noday, “100% pure Cain,” in tones that indicated she also thought it was 100% pure felgercarb. Cassiopiea moved away from them, sidled around one of the tree sculptures a little closer to Cain but still not in his line of vision. From there she could almost hear his conversation, the words indistinct but his tone of voice clear. Too many memories, she thought. I don’t really love him anymore, but he’s still fascinating. It would be very easy...and that’s not what I’m here for. Collecting herself at last, she stepped forward out of the tree’s shelter and as Cain turned his head to address a remark to Colonel Bryn, Apollo’s second officer, their eyes met. Bryn looked a little nonplused as he pushed past her to stop a few metrons from Cassiopiea.
“Cassie,” he whispered.
Cassiopiea nodded, feeling the sting of sudden tears in her eyes. Then she was in his arms.

“Turning point coming up in three, mark,” Ares said.
“Got it,” Rhiannon replied tersely.
Ares could scarcely bring himself to look outside of the cockpit. They were racing along perhaps fifty metrons above the ground, rolling, wooded hills vaguely visible in the light of a crescent moon as they whipped overhead. Low-level runs were scary enough during the day, but at night...if the forward-looking passive scanners failed they might have no warning of an upcoming obstacle. Of his pilot all he could see were her eyes, darkly intent on the ground far ahead, almost looking through rather than at the holographic display of the terrain floating in the cockpit around them, faint lines of green and yellow and red, coded according to height. Her obvious self-confidence was reassuring. Ares knew that Rhiannon had doubts, but none of them were related to her flying.
“Five, four, three, two, one, mark,” Ares said, and they turned onto their final approach heading.
“Master arm on,” she ordered. “Scanner pack on.”
“Master arm on, scanner pack on,” he confirmed. “Range to target, twenty-seven maxims.” Glancing back and slightly above them Ares caught a glimpse of Aglaia’s striker, watching over them, only intermittently visible in the moonlight. Returning his attention to his displays, he said, “No sign of enemy activity.” No active scanners, that is, he corrected to himself, but did not voice the thought; Rhiannon knew that as well as he.
The forest suddenly vanished behind them and they were over a wide lake, low waves made visible in the glitter of moonlight off their crests. Rhiannon dropped down even lower and pushed the throttles forward until the striker, having earlier shed the aerodynamic burden of its emptied drop tanks, was supersonic. Once again Ares glanced back, unable to resist looking at the tail of spray the shockwaves of their passage threw up in their wake. Aglaia had moved well to one side to avoid the blast of water that might well have drowned her engines as well as certainly blocking her sight.
On the rapidly approaching far shore Ares glimpsed buildings, brightly lit, and tall cooling towers venting thin streams of steam into the night air from the factory’s power source. “Radar,” he reported as a series of telltales lit across his panel and his computer screen passed along a quick analysis. “Tracking radars for anti-assault batteries. Cylon.”
“They have us?”
“Not yet.”
“Don’t jam them.” The use of active jamming would only confirm their presence.
“Thirty microns to target.” According to all his indicators the scanner pack was working correctly. It was even possible that they already had the evidence they needed, but there was no way to be certain of that. They had to close.
Suddenly they were over and past the factory; Ares caught only the briefest impression of the buildings passing under them. Before he had time to comment another light on his panel lit and an alarm screamed over their headphones. “Missile launch! Infrared...I think it has us.” He fired a spread of flares as Rhiannon threw the striker into a hard evasive. The flares worked, and far to one side Ares saw a reddish flash as the missile that had been fired after them attacked one of the decoys. That was not the end of their troubles. “Frack, we have a radar lock!”
“Break it,” Rhiannon said urgently.
Ares worked frantically to jam the radar long enough so they could get far enough away for their stealth to be effective again. “Sonofabitch, more missiles.”
On his displays he saw the triangle representing Aglaia’s striker move over on to their tail, then move on across. “Frack, she’s turned off her ECM!” The missiles followed her, and he knew she had deliberately caused them to lock onto her aircraft to decoy them away from their own. His head jerked around just in time to see the other aircraft vanish in a fireball. The flaming wreckage rained down over square maxims of forest. No one could have survived that, he thought, sickened. But there were no more missile locks, no more radars; they were out of range.

It seemed to Cassiopiea that only scant centons passed, but it was centares that she and Cain sat in a corner of the garden and talked. Though she well knew that she should direct the conversation in ways that would gain valuable information, she could not help talking about things she had done since he was lost and asking him what he had done, and just talking about...things. Unimportant things, the kinds of things lovers and ex-lovers were wont to discuss. Once Colonel Bojay approached, looking agitated, but Cain peremptorily waved him away and the young colonel retreated, obviously put-off, and stamped out of the courtyard.
From where they were unobtrusively watching, Noday commented to Miriam, “I do not like the looks of that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Miriam replied. “He looked pissed. If they’d shot them down, I think he’d be dancing and singing.”
Noday squeezed Miriam’s arm and said, “I....hope you’re right, Miri.”
“You and me both.”

Even before she’d shut off the gravitic drive, Columbia’s ground crew were already under the striker removing the recording crystals from the scanner pack, which they handed to the waiting Commander Akamas. A little numb, Rhiannon watched him make a dash for the lifts. A marine was holding one for him; Akamas vanished inside and the lift doors closed. So much for that, she thought.
Clumsily, she fumbled at her seat harness, her fingers seeming too large. Finally the quick-release buckles came undone and she opened the canopy. She wanted to fall asleep in the cockpit, she wanted to exult because they had survived and she had not expected them to, she wanted to weep for her dead commander, who had died not for them, but for the information they carried. Instead she peeled off her gloves, took off her helmet and laid it neatly on the edge of the windscreen, reached up automatically with her right hand to find the canopy so she didn’t bump her head into it, with the left hand pushed herself up. The ladder was already there; she swung her left leg out, then her right, stumbled, almost slid rather than climbed down and hit the deck harder than she had intended. One of the ground crewmen reached out to steady her. “All right, sir?” the woman asked.
“Tired,” Rhiannon said. She felt slightly drunk; one of the surest symptoms she’d overindulged was an inability to walk. Now Ares came around the nose and took her arm.
“Debriefing,” he said.
The debriefing was mercifully quick. The ship’s intelligence officer took their reports, asking a minimum of questions, and told them they were free to go.
Rhiannon stopped at the door. “What results?” she asked him.
“They haven’t told me yet, Lieutenant,” he replied.
Suddenly stubborn in spite of her exhaustion, Rhiannon said, “I’m not going anywhere until I find out if it was worth it.”
The intelligence officer, a junior colonel who had been a striker pilot himself until he had suffered career-ending injuries in a battle near the end of the Cylon War, had been often accused by some of Columbia’s warriors of having forgotten that he had once been one of them himself. Confirming his rumored image, he replied, “That’s hardly your business, Lieutenant.”
Ares was inclined to take Rhiannon’s side. “Sir, two people died out there to get this information through. I think we have the right to know.”
“Lieutenant, you just follow orders,” the colonel replied. “Now get out of here, both of you.”
Outside the room, Rhiannon speculated briefly and obscenely about the man’s relationship with his mother.
“Yeah,” Ares agreed wearily.
Slumping back against the corridor wall, Rhiannon asked, “You ever want to just chuck this felgercarb and go home?”
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah. Not until recently, but now I do.” She ran a hand through her sweat-dampened hair, rubbed the back of her neck, yanked at the collar of her flight suit where it was chafing her. “My mother is still down there, you know. I wonder if they’ll let them go.”
“Guess that depends on how attached they are to life,” Ares said dryly.
“The people are. Their bloody military isn’t. Now I know why we have civilian control of the military. I always thought it was a crock, but now I understand it. Normal people don’t want war. And war is the only reason we exist. It’s gotta be balanced...hades, I’m getting philosophical.”
“Yeah. It’s kinda scary. Go see Leah,” Ares recommended.
“Yeah. I’ll see you in the morning or sometime, Ares.”
Ares watched her go, bumping into the wall once, then he turned and went his own way.

At long last the evening was over; the moon had long since set when they were escorted back through Cain’s house to the waiting cars. Miriam was not greatly surprised to see Colonel Bojay waiting beside the lead one, his face tight with anger. He stepped up to her and hissed, “You are going to pay for this.”
She turned a bland gaze on him. “Pay for what?” she inquired, careful disinterest in her voice.
“You know exactly what I mean. We incinerated one of your fracking striker crews tonight-watch that your blasted ships aren’t next.” With that, he turned and stalked off.
“What?” Cassiopiea wondered, then noticed Miriam’s expression. She did not think she had ever seen such naked apprehension on anyone’s face before.
Noday touched her reassuringly and said, “There were two strikers, Miri. It could have been either of them.” To Cassiopeia she explained, “We sent....in a reconnaissance tonight. Rhiannon was one of the pilots.”
Cassiopiea liked Rhiannon. “I hope she’s all right.”
Miriam had collected herself. “She’s too lucky for her own good. The longer we stay here, the later we find out. Come on, we have a briefing to go to.”

“Well, well, well,” Starbuck commented as he scanned over the results of the reconnaissance run. “All set up and pumping out Cylons to beat the bloody band. Ain’t that something.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any doubt,” Apollo had to agree.
Miriam asked, “Have they made any moves that suggest a heightened state of alert?”
“None that we’ve seen yet,” said Aeneas. “Of course most of their fleet is on the other side of the planet, but the Pegasus is still in parking orbit; no signs of powering-up.”
“I think we should move to blockade positions immediately,” said Starbuck.
“I’m with him,” Miriam seconded.
Raising a hand for patience, the Fleet Commander turned his attention to Cassiopiea. “I am very anxious to hear your report, Cassiopiea.”
“We...didn’t discuss the current situation much.”
Aeneas smiled, a little wanly. The death of one of his striker crews had hit him hard, hard enough that Apollo, for one, suspected that the Fleet Commander had had some kind of romantic relationship with the pilot. Apollo personally had always avoided that kind of thing for just that reason, and also because he felt it was bad for discipline in general. “Understandable,” Aeneas said. “The content of your conversation is of course private and I do not expect you to share it with us. However, if you could, give us your feelings about him.”
“Commander, I have to be honest. He seems to be entirely the same man I knew,” Cassiopiea said straight-forwardly. “All his reactions, everything he said, the way he acted, it all rang true.” She added, “I did give him the medallion.”
“I’d like to be around the next time Iblis runs into Cain,” Starbuck remarked.
“That may have already happened,” said Miriam. “I imagine there’s a lot of talk down there about our reconnaissance.”
“One thing’s for sure, it’s time to whip off the gloves,” Starbuck said bluntly.
“I think,” Apollo said after a moment’s deliberation, “that everything may turn on one thing; who the warriors are loyal to: Cain or Iblis.”
“Normally I’d say Cain, but Iblis appears to have an unfair advantage,” said Aeneas.
“Exactly,” said Starbuck. “They may want to follow Cain, and be unable to.”
Aeneas studied them for a centon. Then he rose and said simply, “Blockade stations. Execute as soon as you return to your ships. Any move at a breakout is to be stopped with force.”
“Missile ships?” Starbuck asked.
“Any warships,” Aeneas replied.
“What about civilian ships?” Apollo asked.
“They should be stopped and boarded,” Miriam said.
Aeneas appeared unwilling to argue or discuss the subject. “Do so,” he said, and left the room.

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