Section 1.5 :
Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

 

 

26 Quartus 6490
Colonial Military Headquarters, Caprica City


Apollo wasn't entirely surprised when Jak called him to his office at a time when most sensible people would have gone home for the night. Apart from the fact that Jak probably knew him well enough to know he'd rather work late than lie in bed in a fruitless attempt to sleep, Felix had already warned him that Jak was on the prowl.

The Supreme Commander, said Felix, had suddenly loomed into his office ("I almost choked on the half-dry sandwich that was doing duty as lunch—a very late lunch, as I tried to point out to him when he yelled at me for eating at my desk. What sort of emotional crisis has the old man wandering the corridors like that, do you think?") and had made snide comments when he'd found Apollo absent, visiting old lovers at the Kobolian.

"I didn't tell him that, of course," Felix assured him.

Apollo shrugged, still a little confused and wondering why he was resenting Joss's fickleness so intensely ( He has no right to be happy! He's supposed to want me! were thoughts that Apollo tried hard not to allow into actual words, even in the privacy of inside his head). He told Jak's outer office where he was and awaited the inevitable summons with no more than his usual nervousness around his godfather. He stole the other half of Felix's sandwich and they got back to work, going over the evidence and the plan, trying to iron out the last minute changes and spot the potential for mistakes and crises. Centars and centars of it. They had dinner at their desks as well, delivered by the sour-faced messenger.

The work took his mind off Joss. By the time Jak called him just before midnight, he was as near equanimity as he ever was.

Whatever emotional crisis had sent Jak looking for him earlier in the evening had passed. The old man was surprising mellow and didn't even mention Apollo's earlier absence. "Well, today went just about as expected."

He offered Apollo a glass of liquor.

"Thank you, sir."

Jak savoured his liquor, and sighed in satisfaction. "Triple malt. A good one."

Apollo couldn't tell the difference, but decided it was more than his life was worth to say so. He thought a Yes, sir would be safe, so indulged in it. Jak grinned and let him enjoy the drink for a centon. Apollo waited fatalistically for the shoe to fall.

"It's difficult, sending you on this one when it's Cain's command. But it's your operation, Captain, and I think you'll be needed to keep an eye on it." Jak put down his glass and rubbed at his eyes. "There's a lot happening at the moment, Apollo. What you said about the politicians was spot on. A lot of people, powerful Council-type people, were very reluctant to allow this mission because it has the potential for causing us a lot of grief at the very highest political and diplomatic level."

Apollo nodded, mutely. He despised politicians.

Jak poured himself another and offered the bottle. Apollo shook his head. "That's why it's taken so long to get approval for this job: it had to get full Council approval and there are too many people on the Council worrying about how it might affect other significant developments that even your exalted security rating doesn't let you into. I came under pressure to withdraw your report, did you know that?"

"No, sir."

"Well, I wasn't having that. Just because they didn't like it, didn't mean you were wrong. They settled for virtually ordering us to make sure that we cause as little damage as possible. It's like they expect us to lob marshmallows at the enemy, not bombs, and then they'd complain if the tinheads get diabetes." Jak was sounding too like Cain for comfort. He swallowed down the last of his liquor. "Commander Cain will enjoy commanding this mission, I think. He's a very great warrior."

Apollo put aside the resentful memory of a scornful voice. ' A pity he hasn't got what it takes to go to the Academy, Adama. Sheba can't wait to get there. She's got more balls than he has, looks like. I'd be ashamed of any child of mine ducking out like that .' It had hurt, but what had hurt more was his father's acquiescent silence and the knowledge that Adama was as ashamed, disgusted and disappointed as Cain wanted him to be. It astonished Apollo, sometimes, that he and his father had retrieved any sort of relationship at all, although it had to be said that Cain's spite had been a pinprick compared to the devastation that had been Joss.

Instead he thought about Cain's record. Cain might have a strong regard for his own reputation, but in truth he'd been the great hero of the previous generation. He was charismatic, full of braggadocio and had an unflinching belief in his own abilities, with a name for reckless courage that few had matched. But he undeniably had a kind of instinctive military brilliance. Even Adama—and Apollo admitted his father was one of the best—even Adama didn't have that spark. There was a great deal to admire when you looked at the man's achievements: the crushing defeat he inflicted on the Cylons at Taxos, the battle at Borallus, the Corellian incident, to name but the three most famous. Cain had earned his reputation, and his nickname, the hard way. As a boy, Apollo had revered the great hero who was one of his father's closest friends, only seeing the faulty man behind the façade as he grew older. He remembered some of that admiration, now.

He nodded and could say, with complete sincerity, "Yes, he is."

"He's very different from your father. Adama's solid worth."

"I know, sir." That was true and it was a compliment Adama would relish. Apollo cast about for something nice to say about his (thankfully) temporary commander. "Commander Cain has a brilliant reputation."

"All the same, I'd like you on the Pegasus, please, Apollo, where you can keep an oversight of what's going on. No playing on the Dhow until you rendezvous for the drop itself."

Apollo thought that was an extraordinary thing for the old man to say. An oversight of what was going on? He looked down to hide his confusion, wondering what Jak meant, what wasn't being said underneath the innocuous words. "Yes, sir. No, sir."

"Three bags full, sir." Jak laughed, then said, more soberly, "Making the decision on the ground, Apollo... it's a nasty one. Very nasty. I'm sorry to lay the extra responsibility on you."

"It comes with the territory. I mean, if I wasn't prepared to carry through the plans and schemes Felix and I come up with, I'd not do the work for the Unit."

If Apollo had still been the wide eyed little boy begging his Uncle Jak for sweets and stories, the Supreme Commander's next words would have been the equivalent of a lollipop offered as a reward for good behaviour. "You can wear your Shield uniform, if it makes you feel better."

Apollo didn't think that was a great idea, although he appreciated the thoughtfulness behind it. "I'd better stick to Fleet. There was a little envy of Shield, earlier."

Jak's mouth twitched. "Dear me, we are growing up."

"I hope so, sir."

"Grown up enough to take your next posting without complaining?"

Apollo's stomach clenched. No. Please not. Please God not.

"Strike Captain Simonitz of the Galactica is being medically retired. You can fill the gap while we cast around for a permanent replacement, put what you've learned on the Columbia to good use."

Apollo's mouth opened a couple of times, and closed with the protests unsaid. He remembered his mother's amusement: 'He has good reason to want to know how you're doing .' Not just paternal pride. His father knew, then; had known at least two sectons ago that Simonitz was going and that a nice, neat Strike Leader-shaped slot was being created at just the right size for Apollo to step into. His father and Jak had plotted this between them. He could only assume that the yahren before they hadn't had grounds to move Simonitz and his escape to the Columbia had been nothing more than a brief respite.

"Sometimes," said Jak, "I really can run the military the way it pleases me. I may be an interfering old man, but it will do the both of you a power of good to work together. Your father's the best I have, you know."

"Yes, I guess he – "

"And he should get over that moralistic nonsense of his and see what you're capable of. Besides, I don't really have anywhere else worth putting you for a yahren without wasting all that experience you got on the Columbia. I wouldn't want to give you anything less than a destroyer, and I don't have one of those in my back pocket right now. Look on this as a way of neatly killing several birds with one stone."

Apollo tried again. "But serving under my father... personalities aside, sir, that's going to make for more difficulties."

"It's hardly unknown for a son or daughter to follow their parents into the same ship. Fleet's a very family orientated place, Apollo. You know that."

Apollo sighed. He did know that. He knew that the way Athena had and Zac did: that all things being equal, they'd end up in what most Fleet families considered the family firm; trapped a system where families would serve on one ship for generations. What was the point of arguing? He'd escaped it for the better part of seven yahrens. That was better than most managed.

Jak, not unsympathetic, grinned and offered him the bottle again. This time, Apollo took it.




"I don't think working with your father will be that bad," said Felix. "You seem to be getting on better with him now."

"It's not him. It's got nothing to do with him at all." Apollo closed his eyes for a micron, but he wasn't able to banish the face he hadn't seen for almost two yahrens now. It stared back at him from behind his closed eyelids; mocking, nonchalant, smiling, eager, loving... and a heart he'd thought cured started aching again. "It's not Dad."

"Ah," said Felix, and when Apollo looked at him, the dark, saturnine face was sympathetic. "Blonds."

"Just the one."

"If you're lucky, it will just be for a few sectars. A yahren at most."

"If I'm really lucky," said Apollo, "I'll be killed on Molecay."





28 Quartus 6490
Strategy Unit Laboratory, Colonial Military Headquarters

"Cain's waiting," warned Apollo. He closed the lid of the protective case holding an improved version of the Link that he'd carried to T18 almost three yahrens before, and pressed his thumb against the lock, sealing it. The box fitted into the backpack Felix had ready for him. "We're due to get that shuttle in a couple of centars."

"They'll hold the shuttle for you. You're going to need this. It's the best we've come up with." Felix took what looked like an average handheld scanner from its box.

"A scanner?"

"Modified. I finished it last night."

Apollo raised an eyebrow. "Modified. How does it work?"

Expression deadly serious, Felix waved the scanner at him. "You point it like this, and it reads the idiot standing in front of you—"

Apollo appreciated the attempt to leaven the atmosphere. "And does it tell you that if I get put on report by Cain for being late, that'll be the idiot who'll be hanging you out of the window by your bootstraps?"

"—and it tells me you've got several pounds of scrap metal in you."

"You're cheating. I think those visits you made to me in hospital gave you a clue there."

"I didn't come to visit you. I came to eat all the fruit more generous people than me brought you and fall madly in love with your mother." Felix handed over the scanner. "Seriously, you know I've been thinking about this ever since your little bombshell hit at Yule. An ordinary scanner will pick up the signatures of Cylon manufactured metals and compounds, but you'd have to be screening out everything else around you all the time and sometimes the signatures can be masked by other things or just confused with stuff we use ourselves." Felix grinned and indicated Apollo's leg. "That could cause us to make some regrettable errors. You're not the only war hero gamely getting about on an artificial joint, you know, and it wouldn't do to mistake you for a Cylon cyborg."

"Just a human one." Apollo ignored the hero jibe.

"We don't know, if you're right, how much—or, more to the point, how little—Cylon material may have been incorporated into those people. You're going to need the most sensitive detector we can get for you. We've taken apart enough centurions over the yahrens to get a good analysis of the metal alloys they use in construction. I've set the scanner to look for those specifics, and those specifics only. That means I've been able to increase sensitivity levels. Try it on your knee."

Apollo passed the scanner over his right knee. Nothing. The tiny screen was lit, but nothing whatever was showing on it.

"This one should be easy." Felix reached into a large box beside the desk and pulled up a deactivated Cylon head. He plonked it, without ceremony, onto the desk surface.

"Off the scale." Apollo always found Cylon 'body' parts gruesome in their almost obscene parody of the human form. The head was no exception, seeming to stare back up at him, mocking. Despite the lack of the red scanning light in the dark eye slit, Apollo had to turn a threatened shudder into a deliberate easing of tense shoulders.

"And now this." Felix handed him a tiny, but very heavy ingot. "Lead. With some impurities taken from our deactivated friend here, present in quantities so small there's no point in trying to explain it to a mere historian who can't get his head around scientific measurement systems."

"Because there's more interesting things inside my head, thank you. It's reading metallic tylinium, free-base alloyed germancium, some hybridised fusion of solium and teaciate."

"The base materials for manufacturing Cylons, none of which we've been able to reproduce ourselves, yet. The chemical and metallurgical data you brought back from T18 wasn't as complete as it might be."

"I was pushed for time," said Apollo. "And there was a lot of stuff to try and get. You should have given me a shopping list."

"I might have done, if I'd realised you can read." Felix grinned. "The metallic version of tylinium would have come in handy. We'll crack it one day."

"But until we do, anyone with a metallic tylinium knee is more suspect than I am."

"I think we can safely say so, yes, even with your track record."

"If this can detect those metals in a lead ingot, then it'll have no trouble with seeing them—" Apollo paused, reluctant to finish.

"In flesh. No, none at all." Felix nodded briskly. "So we know that we've got a way of spotting one, at least, of our possibilities: this will detect any human who has even microscopic amounts of Cylon hardware implanted in their heads."

"One out of five is not good enough."

"I know. Best we can do, though. I've put half a dozen scanners into the back-pack for you to hand around the ground force. You won't have time to check every prisoner yourself. Make sure you get all the scanners back."

Apollo nodded. "No organic scanner?"

Felix shook his head. He went to a refrigerated unit at the far side of the room and brought back a small jar. Greenish-grey and scaly, the thing floated in the clear liquid in the jar, scales overlapping like tiles on a roof, a few thin hair-like wires moved lazily in the preserving fluid. Air, vaporising against the cold jar, roiled like faint smoke.

"The node from our friend here." Felix casually swept the Cylon head down onto the floor out of the way. It bounced noisily. Felix regarded the jar's contents almost fondly. "Reminds me of a pickled walnut."

"I'm allergic," said Apollo, who certainly would never eat walnuts again now Felix had made the comparison. He stared into the jar. "It's in good condition. Mostly they start deliquescing soon after the centurion's killed."

"If you can call a Cylon alive in the first place, we took this from a live capture."

Apollo stiffened, uneasy. He glanced down at the Cylon head on the floor. They weren't human, he told himself. Felix was right: they weren't even really alive. They were just machines with a few live cells wired into them. That was all. It couldn't compare to killing something that was really alive.

"And we're using a new preservative one of the chemists came up with. It's pretty effective."

"Pretty is not the adjective of choice, Felix."

"Adverb, I think. Your grammar really is rocky." Felix grinned, tilting his head in acknowledgement. "This theory of yours that they form some sort of collective brain—"

"The centurion node is almost all neural cells." Apollo looked away from the Cylon head and back to the Cylon head's organic brain. "And it's wired into what seem to be processors of some kind. It's a brain of some sort, Felix."

"I'm not arguing with that."

"Gold commanders have more, IL series have much more."

"I'm not arguing with that, either, just with your leap of logic that has them all processing data remotely for the Imperious Leader. Ingenious idea, Apollo, but there's not a shred of evidence."

Apollo shrugged. "It's not important right now, is it?"

"Suppose not. The problem we have with this—" Felix gave the jar a little shake and the node bobbed around obscenely under the air-tight lid, like some particularly loathsome piece of flotsam. "—is that the Gods were a bit lax when they created life. The original organic Cylons won't have looked anything like us, I suppose, but the basic stuff we're made of is the same. A protein is a protein is a protein."

"Cylon DNA is different."

"Sure, it uses five proteins instead of our four. That's maybe the only thing the scanner could focus itself on, but you'd have to be able to de-nucleate a few hundred cells to be able to do the test." Felix put the jar down and wiped his fingers on his jacket. "I don't think you'll have the time to do that and you'd need a portable lab the size of a landram."

Apollo frowned. "But the scanner picked up the inorganic stuff all right."

"Because it's unique. The problem we have with Cylon proteins is that although they combine in ways different than in our cells, the building blocks are all the same. I have tried, I promise you." He hesitated visibly, then shook his head. "Oh well. Here."

He delved back into the refrigerated store unit and brought out another jar of preserved horror; another amorphous mass of cells, smaller than the Cylon node but just as unattractive.

Apollo's heart thumped uncomfortably. He watched as Felix reached into the jar with forceps and lifted out the unappetising lump, letting it drain. "And this is?"

"You know what it is. A foetus, of sorts. Two sectars old."

"Oh fuck," said Apollo.

"You remember what I told you. We took the Cylon DNA from a downed centurion and combined it into human cells using in-vitro microscopic techniques. Each hybrid was implanted in an empty protein envelope taken from a de-nucleated human ovum."

"Felix, this is as bad as anything the Cylons might be doing on Molecay! You promised me you'd destroyed them all!"

"I've destroyed most of the hybrids," said Felix. "This is the only one left."

"This frightens me almost more than what the Cylons are doing. What in Hades is the point of me blowing up Molecay if you take up where the Cylons leave off?"

"This was a controlled experiment and there aren't any more. We had to see if it was possible, to combine the DNA, even if we couldn't get a viable foetus out of it. How else could we have found supporting evidence for your theories?"

Apollo stared at him. "Fuck," he said again, at last.

"This is the only remaining material. I oversaw the destruction of the rest myself."

"Well, that makes me feel better."

"It should. You can trust me, Apollo. I'm as scared of this crap as you are, but we had to be certain."

Apollo raised his hands and let them fall again in a helpless gesture.

After watching him for a centon, Felix went on, "Like I told you the night you got back, what developed was, as you predicted, mostly human. Almost one hundred percent human, but not quite."

"I know. You managed to combine Cylon and human DNA. Bully for you, Felix. Don't expect me to cheer."

"I'm not cheering, either. We did it, but making it viable is another matter entirely."

"Thank God!"

Except that the Cylons had more than thirty yahrens of research on Felix and his band of mad scientists. That thought had come to Felix as well.

"If they've done it and found some way of making the hybrids viable, you know you may just might come across things on Molecay that are mostly human, almost one hundred percent human..."

"But not quite."

"No."

Apollo hefted the scanner in his hands. "And this won't help me."

"No. I wish I could say it did, Apollo, but I can't work out how to detect evidence of Cylon DNA and be certain that the scanner is reading Cylon as opposed to human protein. There really isn't a way of checking out the prisoners before you risk bringing any of them back; not if the Cylons have gone down the route of creating and implanting a hybrid node."

"Just as we thought." Apollo scrubbed wearily at his eyes with the heel of his free hand. "That's so great."

"Yeah. Sorry." Felix dropped the thing back into its jar, clearly relieved to be rid of it. He resealed the lid.

"What would it look like there, if they are going for a hybrid?" asked Apollo, desperate. "Like that thing?"

"I don't know. That's what we managed to make with our technology. The Lords alone know what their version might look like."

For a centon, Apollo despaired. "This is impossible, Felix. If I don't really know what I'm looking for, how in hell can I bring any of them back?"

"I don't know that, either."

Apollo's knees were trembling. He sat down on a bench stool, supporting himself on the lab bench with his elbows. The little jar was only a foot or two away, to his right. He stared at it, swallowing down the nausea.

"We should have gone with your idea of burning Molecay from space."

"Such a morally superior idea."

Felix shrugged. "We can't afford morals, Apollo. Not this time."

Apollo said, his voice steadier than he expected, "I'm scared by all of this. I can't tell you how scared."

"Me, too." And Felix's voice shook more than Apollo's had. After a micron, he cleared his throat. "I've downloaded details and holopics from the production process onto a datapad for you. If you see anything like this, you know what the Cylons are trying to do."

"Oh sure, their lab is going to look just like this one! Come on, Felix! You've seen the data brought back from Cylon bases, much less the stuff I got on T18. Half of the equipment isn't even half-way recognisable."

"Then just blow up everything." Felix handed him the datapad. "It's the best we can do, you know."

"I know." Apollo raised his head. "All the rest are destroyed?"

"Yes. I promise."

"And this one?"

"I'll destroy that, too. Trust me."

Apollo gave him the most meaningful look he could. "Now would be a good time. Now would be a very good time."

Felix inclined his head. "You really are a prig sometimes, you know." He put the sealed jar with its revolting little mass of unnatural organic matter into a small incinerator. "Do the honours?"

Apollo pressed the buttons with fingers that shook visibly. When he opened the incinerator again, the jar and its contents were little more than a puddle of slag. "That's better."

Felix had taken back the scanner. He fitted it into a soft leather carrying case. "It'll loop through your belt," he said, handing it over.

"Thanks."

Felix hauled a large carry case onto the bench. "Bring back as many nodes as you can. This is refrigerated; you flick this switch here to activate the coolants."

"I'll try. But if we're a few days getting back, all you may have in the vials might be icy sludge."

"The vials are filled with the new preservative. I'm not worried about that." Felix leaned up against his workbench. "What will you do with the ones you can't be sure about?"

"You've just told me I can't be sure about any of them."

"Yeah. Sorry," said Felix, again. "You'll be able to tell if any have Cylon hardware inside of them, though."

"Not that that's enough." Apollo turned the scanner over and over with his fingers.

"Sorry."

"And you know what I'll have to do with them."

"Will you be able to do it?" Felix looked at him, eyes troubled. "Don't take this the wrong way, Apollo, but I've known you for what, eight yahrens now? More than eight yahrens since SSI. I think you can rationalise away killing Cylons because they're machines, basically. Killing one of them is like shutting down a computer, taking a PC offline. Something organic is a bit different. You're too soft hearted."

"I killed a Jack, once. In a fire fight."

"And you weren't exactly a happy little Shield Warrior afterwards."

Apollo shrugged, hoping his face wasn't showing anything. He'd killed the Jack, true, and he'd had several counselling sessions with the Shield psychs afterwards while they tried to persuade him he'd had no choice. He hadn't and he knew it. It still didn't make it any easier to forgive himself for taking a human life. That most definitely wasn't like taking a computer off-line.

"I'll do what I have to." He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, the headache beginning behind his right eye. He concentrated for a centon on slotting the scanner into place beside his laser holster. He was pleased to see that his hands were quite steady as he re-buckled his belt.

Felix handed him another case. "This may be useful."

Apollo's mouth tightened. "What is it?"

"You know what it is. It's fast acting and painless. Twenty shots in each hypo, ten hypos, all pre-loaded. I thought... I thought that if you had to leave any of them behind, this might make it easier."

"I see. You expect me to poison them before I blow them up?"

"They won't feel anything."

"I fucking well will!" Apollo slammed down the box of slim, deadly little hypos, scattering them, and abruptly pushed himself away from the bench.

"It'll be kinder," said Felix, to Apollo's back.

Just for a micron, Apollo wanted to scream and cry and beat his fists against a wall somewhere. He breathed deep to get it under control, letting the breath sigh out of him, turning back to Felix. "I want to bring as many back as I can."

"If you bring them back, they'll live the rest of their lives in that special penal colony. The Council could never authorise them to live free."

"Better that than being experimented upon."

Felix slotted the hypos back into place. "You think?"

Apollo looked over to the incinerator and its pool of cooling slag. No. The only difference was likely to be who was doing the experimenting. Slowly, he stretched out a hand and picked up the box of hypos. It fitted into the backpack., sitting neatly on the case that held the Link, the damned Link that had got them into this god-awful mess in the first place.




The only quiet place Apollo could find was the turboflush. He locked himself into a cubicle, dropping the carry-case and backpack onto the floor and losing the small amount of lunch that he'd had. And then he sat there for the better part of twenty centons, holding the modified scanner against the metal buried in his leg and wondering that if the next human cyborg he came up against, other than himself, would be the one he had to kill.