THE SCHOOL OF FEAR

CHAPTER 4 PART 2

“How’d we get picked for this duty?” Boomer wondered aloud.
The main viewscreen on the bridge of the battlecruiser Triumph showed nothing but blackness. Starbuck studied the ebon screen for a centon, then he said, “They picked us, Boomer, because we glow in the dark.”
Starbuck’s statement was literally true. Though nearly the size of a battlestar, Triumph contained engines far beyond those of a battlestar to power both her drive and her vast suites of offensive and defensive armament. That amount of power produced a lot of waste heat, and Triumph and her sisters needed radiators to match. Now, leading the four ships of the squadron through the void, Triumph had her three enormous stowable radiators fully deployed. They glowed cherry-red, far brighter than the ship’s running lights and putting out a signature on infrared that could be scanned clearly even through the interference produced by the void. With Triumph leading the column and her sister Victory bringing up the rear, there was no question of anyone getting lost, or, if they somehow did, of finding their way back.
“Do you have any idea how long Aeneas intends to stay in here?” Boomer asked.
“Long as it takes, I guess.”
“That could be sectons, even at half-light.”
Starbuck smiled and shrugged, eyes still fixed on the screen. “War’s over, Boomer...time’s something we’ve got plenty of.”

Nearly a secton passed and still the squadron was encircled by the void. Aeneas would have liked to send viper probes out to explore the region and perhaps find its boundaries, but the risk of losing pilots and ships was too great. A drone probe had been launched from the Galactica, but it had vanished and never been heard from again. Either it had malfunctioned—a distinct possibility, since it had been in storage since well before the Destruction—or some danger of the void had disabled it. So the four warships plunged ahead blindly while their crews fretted and tried to find ways to pass the time.

“Do you understand this game?” Rhiannon asked Leah.
Leah consumed another mushie before replying, “No. Actually, I think it’s pretty stupid.”
Leaning forward against the rail and peering down into the court below, Rhiannon felt slightly reassured. She knew that Capricans were as fond of triad as Sagitarans were of tournaments and battle reenactments, but it held no attraction for her and so was somehow pleased to find that Leah shared her opinion. Still, since Ares was playing, it was only proper that they show crew solidarity and put in an appearance.
The spectator areas of the Galactica’s triad court were filled to capacity with enthusiastic crewmembers, among them Commander Apollo, as Ares and another Caprican crewman from the Columbia took on Galactica’s second-string Gold Team. Thus far the Columbia team was getting slaughtered, ten points to four.
“Pretty embarrassing, really,” Rhiannon noted as Gold Team scored another goal.
“They are trying hard,” Leah said. “Besides, they don’t get much chance to practice. There isn’t a triad court aboard the Columbia.”
“A waste of space,” Rhiannon replied loftily. “No doubt we have an extra library or more computers or something.”
“Ares checked the blueprints. They made the Senior Officer’s Mess larger.”
Rhiannon winced as one of the Gold Team players rib-blocked Ares into a wall. “Yow.”
“The officiator missed it too,” Leah commented disapprovingly.
“He’s been doing a lot of that, damn him.” Sitting back, Rhiannon slid her arm around Leah, not only because she wanted to but also to irritate the watching Capricans, and with her free hand fished a mushie out of the container on Leah’s lap. “Dreadful things,” she said, but ate it. “Apollo’s leaving,” she added. “Likely as bored as we are.”
Leah looked across the court and watched Apollo follow his exec, the unpopular Colonel Xaviar, up the stairs and out of the spectator area. “He seemed to be in a hurry.”
“I’d be in a hurry too. Eleven to four? Please....”
Polishing off the last mushie, Leah said, “Do you want to leave?”
“Yes, let’s. I’m sure we can find something more entertaining than this.”
“I imagine so.”
A few Galactica security men were standing around in the corridor outside, waiting to provide any necessary crowd control once the match was over. One asked, “What’s the score?”
“Don’t ask,” Rhiannon replied tersely.
“I thought you didn’t care,” Leah said as they strolled down the corridor in the general direction of the hangar bays.
“I’m not going to let that lot know.”
“I’m not sure when the mail is going back, but I wrote my mother,” Leah said.
“Um, what did you say?”
“It wasn’t particularly easy,” Leah admitted. “I don’t believe she’ll mind, but you wonder, you know? I mean, how did your mother react?”
“She’s Sagitaran; she didn’t.”
“I had a friend at the Command Academy whose parents disowned him.”
“Proves a lot about them, doesn’t it? How can anyone let something like that get in the way of loving their own child? It’s sick. Boring leftovers from the Book of Elders and all that felgercarb.”
“One thing I like about you, you have an opinion about everything.”
“Usually wrong, no doubt, but at least I have one.”
Rapid footsteps came up behind them and they stepped aside to let whoever it was through, but the woman hauled to a stop when she saw them. “Rhiannon, what are you doing here?”
“Trying to incite revolution,” Rhiannon replied. “Leah, this is my half-sister, Amala.”
Leah looked up at Amala, who was tall and slender, then back at Rhiannon, short and not entirely sleek, clearly taken by the contrast.
“Amala, this is Leah.”
“So I hear,” Amala commented in neutral tones.
“Where were you going in such a hurry? I’ve never seen you move so fast before except in pursuit of men.”
“Considering the source, I’ll ignore that comment. We’ve come to the end of the void!” Amala exclaimed. “Commander Starbuck reported sighting a star system ahead. It could be Kobol. I have to tell Grandfather. So, if you don’t mind....”
“Go, go, I wouldn’t dare delay you.” Rhiannon watched her go, then commented, “Silly person.”
“Your sister?”
“I love her, but she’s a dip.”
“A what?”
“Single-minded,” Rhiannon clarified.
“She’s not very much like you,” Leah observed.
“Not at all,” Rhiannon replied proudly.

The four ships emerged from the void and eased into orbit around the single substantial planet orbiting the shrunken, variable star. Adama stood beside Aeneas on Columbia’s bridge watching as the scanner reports came up on the monitors. As the ships orbited, the scanners painted a picture of a planet thick with complex ruins. There could be no question that this was indeed Kobol. Although the planet was completely desertified and its atmosphere rather thin, they would be able to explore without having to wear special gear, though some precautions against solar radiation would have to be taken during periods when the star was more active than normal.
“What happened here?” Aeneas asked Adama during a brief pause in the flood of data as the Columbia changed orbits.
“According to the records, there was incredible waste,” Adama said. “As technology advanced the population rose, and no limitations were set. It was felt that to limit the number of children people could have was to infringe on their rights and interfere with nature...as if overrunning the ecosystem was not interfering with nature. The planet became crowded and polluted. There was constant warfare between the tribes, most of it minor, but war nonetheless. No ethical limitations were placed on experimentation, and some scientists began experimenting with the magnetic fields of Kobol’s sun. It’s no longer known what their intent was, but the result was that the star became unstable and that, combined with the depletion of resources and pollution, made the planet begin the slide to becoming uninhabitable.”
Aeneas nodded. The rest of the story was well known. The Elders of Kobol had decided on a desperate plan. Although most would have to remain behind and die, a portion of Kobol’s people could escape the onrushing doom. Each tribe constructed a fleet of starships and, over a period of many yahrens, the ships set sail. Many planets were initially settled; most of those settlements failed. At last, the Twelve Worlds of the Three Suns were discovered, an ideal solution, and the remaining settlements were abandoned and the people moved to the new Colonies, some four hundred yahrens after the beginning of the Exodus and nearly three hundred and fifty after the last known ship to escape from Kobol had departed the dying planet.
After the Colonies were founded, there had been a backlash, partly emotional, partly intellectual. A charismatic leader appeared on the planet Taura, a man named Sagan, widely believed to have been a messenger from God or at least divinely inspired. A man of faultless life and great personal charm, Sagan had preached a new doctrine; that the Tribes had sinned against God, nature, and humanity itself by spoiling the once-beautiful Kobol, and that until a new ethical system arose to accommodate technology, mankind should do without it. Taurean efforts to stop Sagan backfired badly; executing him only turned him from a man into that most dangerous of creatures, a legend. Sagan’s cult spread through the Colonies like wildfire, and everything technological was destroyed. It took over four thousand yahrens for mankind to even begin to recover. It had been a hard time to live through, but the sacrifices had not been in vain. The tribes had learned their lesson. The Twelve Colonies were far from perfect, but the Twelve Worlds had not been ravaged, raped, ruined, and overrun. Population had been strictly controlled, technology carefully used, most heavy industry and nearly all mining kept off-planet; the Cylons had done more damage in a thousand yahrens of raiding than the Colonials had managed in seven thousand yahrens of settlement.
A scanner tech came up to the command level and reported to Aeneas, “We should have a preliminary planetary map ready by the end of this orbit, my lord.”
“Excellent.” He turned to Adama and added, “Once we have the initial maps we can send our strikers down to map more precisely. Their attack avionics are surprisingly well-suited to this sort of thing. Looking for buried Cylon installations isn’t much different from looking for buried ruins. What will the first area to be explored be?”
“We’d like to identify Eden. It was the first city on Kobol, and the largest. The seat of the government...and the burial place of the Lords,” Adama said reverently.
“And, if I recall my Book of the Word correctly, the first city to fall in the civil disturbances during the Exodus.”
Adama nodded. “It’s not surprising there were riots. So many had to be left behind. It’s a decision I would never want to have to make.”
“How were the people who went chosen? Is there any record of that?”
“There is some, and not always pleasant reading, I might add. Of course there was a certain amount of nepotism.” Adama smiled slightly and added, “Supposedly my own family is descended directly from one of the Lords. But there was also some effort to choose logically. Younger people, people with a variety of talents...not just scientists and engineers, but poets and artisans too. And no results of the genetic experimentation that took place on Kobol near the end were permitted to leave. The only remnant of that is our longer lifespans, which they decided was a beneficial modification and which eventually was bred into our entire population. Some of the other variants were apparently quite monstrous.”
Aeneas looked at the planet stolidly revolving below them. “It’s going to be interesting.”
“That it is.”

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